Ukrainian President Zelenskyy spoke to the Israeli Knesset to request military and diplomatic support, but some of his comparisons drew ire from lawmakers and newspapers in Israel.
Communications Minister Yoaz Hendel pointed out that Nazi Germany’s genocide of Jews “was also carried out on Ukrainian land,” and that while “the war is terrible, the comparison [by Zelenskyy] to the horrors of the Holocaust and the Final Solution is outrageous.”
In the opening of his speech, Zelenskyy compared the threats that Ukraine and Israel have faced: “the total destruction of our people, our state, our people, our state, our culture, even the name: Ukraine, Israel.”
Bezalel Smotrich, the leader of a far-right opposition party, said Zelenskyy was acting “to rewrite history and erase the involvement of the Ukrainian people in the extermination of Jews.”
One Likud member of the Knesset said Zelenskyy’s analysis “borders on Holocaust denial.”
“War is always a terrible thing… but every comparison between a regular war, as difficult as it is, and the extermination of millions of Jews in gas chambers in the framework of the Final Solution is a complete distortion of history,” he added.