Head of “Israel” holocaust memorial compares Israelis to Nazis

Source: Palsolidarity, 21-1-2007
Al-Khalil Region - Aljazeera, January 20th
The head of "Israel`s" central Holocaust memorial has criticised Jewish settlers who harass Palestinians in the West Bank city of Hebron (al-Khalil).
Yosef Lapid, the chairman of Yad Vashem, "Israel`s" largest Holocaust memorial said on Saturday that the abuse recalled the anti-Semitism present in Europe prior to the second world war.
Lapid's unusually fierce and public attack was prompted by "Israeli" television footage showing a al-Khalil settler woman hissing "whore" at her Palestinian neighbour and settler children lobbing rocks at Arab homes.
The spectacle stirred outrage in the Jewish (Zionist) state, where many view the settlers as a movement opposed to co-existence between Jews and Arabs, and hostile to the creation of a future Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Lapid, a Holocaust survivor who lost his father to the Nazi genocide, said in a weekly commentary on "Israel" Radio that the acts of some al-Khalil settlers reminded him of persecution endured by Jews in his native Yugoslavia on the eve of the second world war.
Bitter persecution
"It was not crematoria or pogroms that made our life in the diaspora bitter before they began to kill us, but persecution, harassment, stone-throwing, damage to livelihood, intimidation, spitting and scorn," he said.
"I was afraid to go to school, because of the little anti-Semites who used to lay in ambush on the way and beat us up. How is that different from a Palestinian child in Hebron (al-Khalil)?"
Al-Khalil has been a frequent fighting flashpoint in more than six years between "Israeli" settlers and Palestinians since the second intifada began in 2000. Some 400 settlers live there, under heavy "Israeli" military guard, amid 150,000 Palestinians.
Arif Jabari, al-Khalil's governor, said: "If they are serious about co-existence, the `Israelis` must take practical steps on the hundreds of daily violations against Palestinians in the old city."
The World Court has branded the settlements illegal but many Jews claim a biblical birthright to the West Bank, which "Israel" captured from Jordan in a 1967 Middle East war.