Outrage as Israeli council leader says Gaza strip should be “left empty, just like Auschwitz”
Auschwitz Museum calls comments by David Azoulay "shameful", says "terrorism can never be a response to terrorism"
Jenni Frazer is a freelance journalist
The Auschwitz Museum has reacted angrily to a call by an Israeli local council leader that the Gaza Strip should be “flattened completely, just like Auschwitz today”.
David Azoulay, who leads the Metula council near the Lebanon border, told a radio programme in Israel that he did not consider himself to be “a far-right person”. Nevertheless, he said, after the events of 7 October, Gaza’s residents should be told to go to the Strip’s beaches, where they would be “loaded up” and sent to refugee camps in Lebanon.
When Azoulay was asked what should happen to the Gaza Strip once the residents were removed, he said that it should be “left empty, just like Auschwitz. A museum. So the whole world will learn what the state of Israel can do.” His plan envisaged the area being turned into a huge buffer zone “from the sea to the border fence, completely empty, so that everyone remembers what was once there.” He repeated: “Flatten everything, just like Auschwitz is today”.
But in a furious social media response on Twitter/X, a spokesperson for the Auschwitz Museum said: “Memory of victims of Auschwitz has, at times, been violated and instrumentalised in various extreme statements.
“David Azoulay appears to wish to use the symbol of the largest cemetery in the world as some sort of a sick, hateful, pseudo-artistic, symbolic expression.
“Calling for acts that seem to transgress any civil, wartime, moral, and human laws, that may sound as a call for murder of the scale akin to Auschwitz, puts the whole honest world face-to-face with a madness that must be confronted and firmly rejected.
“We do hope that Israeli authorities will react to such shameful abuse, as terrorism can never be a response to terrorism”.
A number of comments on Twitter/X claimed that Azoulay’s remarks meant that Israel was using Hitler as a role model in its fight against Hamas. There has been no comment from anyone in the Israeli government about Azoulay’s suggestion.
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