'I have empathy for Holocaust survivors,' MK Tibi says in Knesset speech

Tibi tells 'Post' Holocaust denial is wrong and unjustified.

By ARIEL BEN SOLOMON
Updated: JANUARY 28, 2016 16:35
MK Ahmed Tibi (UAL - Ta'al) in the Knesset. (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
MK Ahmed Tibi (UAL - Ta'al) in the Knesset.
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Joint List MK Ahmad Tibi told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday that “Holocaust denial is wrong and unjustified.”
Each year he attends the Knesset memorial ceremony called “Every Man Has a Name,” in which the names of the deceased are read.
In 2010, the deputy Knesset speaker gave a speech about the Holocaust, which the current President Reuven Rivlin, who was then Knesset speaker, said was “one of the best speeches he has ever heard” in the Knesset.
In a new speech on the Holocaust on Tuesday, the senior Arab MK reiterated the theme of empathy for survivors: “They are victims of the worst crime in modern history, genocide, as an expression of the theory of racial purity.”
The Ta’al party MK said that Nazism was a product of Europe in the West, “not here in the East.”
Tibi also referred to the controversy over previous statements by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that sought to put some of the blame for the Holocaust on the former Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini. He accused Netanyahu of trying to demonize the Palestinian people.
“The Holocaust was a terrible event and a disgrace to humanity, a stain that will never fade, especially a disgrace for the West,” Tibi said in the speech.
He added that the West tries to present the Holocaust as an isolated incident in its past when in fact there are many others. “And all of these were committed by the West, not the East.”
Tibi said there was an attempt by some to create a collective memory of a “Judeo-Christian” cultural front in order to contrast it with Islamic civilization, and afterwards with the Palestinians.
“In recent decades the phenomenon of Islamophobia grew and anti-Semitism as an expression that threatens all opponents of the occupation or the Israeli government’s policy,” he continued.
“Let’s change the direction, let’s step to different future far from hatred and racism, let us step to peace,” Tibi said.


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