Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has rejected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's comparison of the Russian invasion of Ukraine to the Nazi genocide.
Bennett said that he understood that Zelenskyy is "a leader who is fighting for the life of his country" but that "I personally believe that it is forbidden to equate the Holocaust to anything," The Hill reported.
Zelenskyy, who is Jewish, addressed the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, on Sunday night, via videoconference, and urged Israeli lawmakers to help his country fight back against Russia.
"Why has Israel refrained from sanctions on Russia? Israel needs to give answers to these questions and after that, live with them," Zelenskyy said.
In his speech, Zelenskyy accused Putin of trying to carry out a "final solution" against Ukraine, using the Nazi term for its planned genocide of 6 million Jews during World War II, the Associated Press reported.
"You remember it and will never forget it for sure," the Ukraine president said. "But you should hear what is coming from Moscow now. They are saying the same words now: ‘final solution.’ But this time it’s about us, about the Ukrainian question."
He also asked Israel to send its Iron Dome missile defense system to Ukraine to help protect its citizens from Russian shelling. Zelenskyy praised the Iron Dome as the best missile-defense system in the world and complained that Israel was not even supplying Ukraine with defensive weapons, the Jerusalem Post reported.
While Israel has delivered aid to Ukraine, it has rejected requests to provide arms or impose sanctions against Russia or its oligarchs.
Prime Minister Bennett has mediated between Zelenskyy and Putin, but the Ukrainian leader said mediation can be between two sides but not between good and evil.
Some Israeli Cabinet ministers and members of parliament said they were offended by Zelenskyy’s comparisons to the Holocaust.
"His criticism of Israel was legitimate, as was his raising expectations of us, but not his infuriating and ridiculous comparison to the Holocaust and his attempt to rewrite history and to erase the role of the Ukrainian people in the attempts to exterminate the Jewish people," Religious Zionist Party leader Bezalel Smotrich said, according to the Jerusalem Post.
Zelenskyy connecting the Russian invasion of Ukraine to the Holocaust was not well received by Yad Vashem, Israel's national Holocaust memoria, The Week reported. In a statement that did not name Zelenskyy, Yad Vashem stated: "Propagandist discourse accompanying the current hostilities is saturated with irresponsible statements and completely inaccurate comparisons with Nazi ideology and actions before and during the Holocaust. Yad Vashem condemns this trivialization and distortion of the historical facts of the Holocaust."
Putin, meanwhile, has claimed that his invasion of Ukraine is about ridding the Ukrainian government of neo-Nazis. But historians have noted that Ukraine is a democracy led by a Jewish president.
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