Transportation Minister: Israel Represents Voice of Jewish History

Jerusalem, 12 April, 2017 (TPS) -- Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz (Likud) said Wednesday that Israel had no choice but to respond to White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s assertion Tuesday that “someone as despicable as Hitler didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons.”

“As a Jew, as the son of Holocaust survivors, and as a minister in the government of Israel, the nation state of the Jewish people, 72 years after the Holocaust ended and two weeks before Holocaust Memorial Day, I couldn’t not respond. We, the Israeli government, had to demand an apology or for Spicer to resign. He apologized, and it’s good that he did,” Katz told Army Radio.

Asked whether he felt Spicer was lying or simply uninformed, Katz referred to Spicer’s subsequent clarification that Hitler did not use poison gas “on his own people” and said the comment either meant that the Jews do not represent a nation or that they are not human beings. “As a minister in the government of Israel, I said that in this situation, despite our close ties with the United States, despite the close alliance between our countries, and despite the foreign aid we receive from the United States, sometimes there are moral issues that take precedence over political considerations. There are some responsibilities that we cannot let pass.”

“I felt the need to represent the six million Jews who were murdered during the Holocaust. The planned, systematic attempt to exterminate an entire people has no parallel in history and we must make that clear,” he added.

Katz also noted Israel’s strong support for the Trump administration’s Tomahawk missile attack on Syrian positions following the chemical attack, saying Jerusalem was the first capital in the world to offer support for the attack and calling the move an important statement not only to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, but also to Syrian allies Iran Supreme Leader Ali Khameini and Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah.

“At the same time, the moment a statement like Spicer’s is made, it makes no difference that we are a small country and the United States is a superpower. We represent and we are the voice for all of Jewish history,” Katz said.