Former Meretz Party leader Zehava Gal-On on Wednesday compared Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir to Hitler, posting to social media a picture of him with his arm raised and captioning it “Heil Kahane.”
After coming under fire for the tweet, Gal-On deleted it, writing, “I erased the tweet, still waiting for racism to be erased from the Knesset.”
In response, Ben-Gvir took Gal-On to task, tweeting: “The daughter of Holocaust survivors is cheapening and ripping up the [memory] of the holy six million [Jews who were killed by the Nazis]. Zehava, what would your mother and father say about this?”
בת להורים ניצולי שואה, מוזילה ודוקרת את ששת מיליוני הקדושים. זהבה, מה אמא ואבא היו אומרים על זה? pic.twitter.com/W1q0QwV3sw
— איתמר בן גביר (@itamarbengvir) January 25, 2023
The incident comes as Israeli President Isaac Herzog is set to deliver on Thursday the main address in the European Parliament at a special session marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day that will be attended by lawmakers and Shoah survivors.
International Holocaust Remembrance Day is commemorated annually on Jan. 27, the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Gal-On, a former Meretz chair who had retired from politics, returned to win the party’s primary ahead of the Nov. 1 national election.
Meretz failed to cross the electoral threshold to enter the Knesset for the first time since the party’s formation in 1992.
