The Ukrainian leader wanted to exploit the memory of the genocide to advance his goals, Dani Dayan has said<\/p>\n
The chairman of the Jerusalem-based Yad Vashem\u00a0World Holocaust Remembrance Center has said it was the right decision to reject a request from Ukraine\u2019s Vladimir Zelensky to deliver a speech at the institution.
\nKiev\u2019s ambassador to Israel approached the center soon after the Ukraine conflict escalated in February 2022, asking if Zelensky would be allowed to address members of the national legislature and other officials at the site during an event which would be broadcast internationally. The request was turned down.
\nAccording to the chairman of the center, Dani Dayan, he expected Zelensky to draw parallels between the Holocaust and the Ukraine conflict \u2013 something that he found unacceptable. \u201cI immediately understood what he was getting at,\u201d Dayan told the German newspaper NOZ in an interview published on Saturday. \u201cNot every war crime is genocide, and not every genocide is a Holocaust.\u201d
\nDayan\u00a0also admitted that he would likely have had to intervene and \u201cinterrupt\u201d Zelensky during the event to prevent the Ukrainian leader from distorting history.
\n\u201cIn Ukraine, there were not only victims of the Holocaust. Ukrainians were also [Nazi] accomplices, and, in some cases, primary perpetrators,\u201d Dayan told NOZ, adding that canceling the event was the \u201cright\u201d thing to do.<\/p>\n
Read more<\/p>\n
Israel hits out at Ukrainian glorification of WWII Nazi collaborator<\/p>\n
Russia has long accused Kiev of promoting neo-Nazism and glorifying Nazi collaborators, including the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which waged a mass killing campaign between 1943 and 1945 against Poles and Jews, in which more than 100,000 people perished.
\nMoscow has repeatedly warned of a Nazi revival in Ukraine and cited \u201cdenazification\u201d as one of the main goals of its military operation against Kiev.
\nZelensky tried nonetheless to portray Ukraine as the victim of a Holocaust-like genocide when he addressed Israeli legislators and officials via a video conference in March 2022. His choice of words sparked a wave of indignation among the politicians. Religious Zionist Party leader Bezalel Smotrich branded it an \u201cinfuriating and ridiculous comparison.\u201d
\nIsrael\u2019s communications minister at the time, Yoaz Hendel, called it \u201coutrageous\u201d and then MP Yuval Steinitz stated that Zelensky\u2019s words were close to \u201cHolocaust denial\u201d and amounted to a \u201ccomplete distortion of history.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Ukrainian leader wanted to exploit the memory of the genocide to advance his goals, Dani Dayan has said The chairman of the Jerusalem-based Yad Vashem\u00a0World Holocaust Remembrance Center has…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25509,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-environment","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}