New controversy at the United Nations, with implications also in Israel, over the use of the yellow Star of David as a form of protest. During another emergency Security Council meeting (and argument) on the situation in Gaza, Israeli UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan and the rest of the delegation pinned the symbol reading “Never Again” to their jackets, comparing Hamas to the Nazis in World War II. “We will not take it away until you condemn Hamas’s atrocities,” he thundered, declaring that “Hamas terrorists are modern-day Nazis. The only solution they want is the final solution, the extermination of the Jews.” “As with the Nazis’ rise to power, the world is silent,” the diplomat added, reiterating his anger that the Security Council had approved the October 7 attacks against Israel. “Some of you seem to have learned nothing in the last 80 years. You have forgotten why this board was formed.”
However, his gesture sparked several controversies and drew criticism from, among others, Dani Dayan, the director of the Yad Vashem Shoah Museum in Jerusalem. “It saddened us to see the members of the Israeli UN delegation with the yellow star. “This gesture represents an outrage both for the victims of the Shoah and for the State of Israel,” he wrote about the impotence of the Jewish people at a time when they were at the mercy of others. Today we have an independent state with a strong army and are masters of our destiny. We must wear the blue and white flag on our chest and not this star.”
Erdan – called Dayan by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – also stressed that “the difference between 1939 and today is that we have a strong state and an army and we will defend ourselves.” But his gesture was intended to highlight the silence of many countries’ ambassadors in the face of Hamas’s atrocities, which he said was similar to the silence during the Shoah.
Read the full article on ANSA.it