Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday met with the head of the Ukrainian Radical Party, whose members include neo-Nazis and extreme nationalists, the Times of Israel reported.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met today, at the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem, with members of a Ukrainian parliamentary delegation led by Ukraine-Israel Inter-Parliamentary Friendship Association Chairman Georgii Logvynskyi. ???? pic.twitter.com/4MxqtkRMBS
— PM of Israel (@IsraeliPM) July 10, 2019
In a tweet by the office of the Israeli Prime Minister, Netanyahu can be seen shaking hands with Oleh Lyashko, the head of the Ukrainian party.
Deborah Lipstadt called Netanyahu a hypocrite, saying that “you have a government whose policy is to make nice with the Polish government, which is trying to rewrite Holocaust history, and with a Hungarian government that’s engaging in anti-Semitism.” https://t.co/6XyXS0EpbD
— Canadian Jewish News (@TheCJN) July 11, 2019
Lyashko has been known to stir up controversy. In 2015, he criticized then-President Petro Poroshenko for apologizing for the role of Ukrainian Nazi collaborators during the Holocaust in his speech before the Knesset, saying that his remarks were a “humiliation” for Ukraine and that Poroshenko was “proclaiming [the] inferiority of his people.”
An unlikely union: Israel and the European far right | by; Ramzy Baroud & Romana Rubeo https://t.co/8kWDoAmggp
— SafetyPin-Daily (@SafetyPinDaily) July 18, 2018
Earlier this year, Lyashko accused current Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a Jewish comedian and politician, of “lacking patriotism”.
#Netanyahu "who has come under fire in recent years for allegedly failing to confront #Antisemitism & revisionism in Central & E. #Europe, met Wednesday with the head of a Ukrainian political party whose membership includes ultranationalists & #neoNazis":https://t.co/CchIxGRrON
— Pauline Park (@paulinepark) July 11, 2019
Notable Ukrainian Radical Party members include Artyom Vitko, who was filmed in 2015 singing a song celebrating Adolf Hitler. Another member is nationalist Yuri Shukhevych, son of Nazi collaborator Roman Shukhevych, whose troops committed war crimes against Jews in World War II.
Another member is Artyom Vitko, who was filmed in 2015 singing a song celebrating Adolf Hitler. The lyrics went:
“Adolf Hitler, together with us, Adolf Hitler, in each of us, and an eagle with iron wings will help us at the right time."https://t.co/0MheAce3v2
— Sam Sokol (@SamuelSokol) July 10, 2019
Last July, Netanyahu hosted Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has been condemned by Hungarian Jews for glorifying the Nazi-allied Miklós Horthy regime and minimizing the role Hungarians played in the extermination of half the country’s Jewish population.
Last September, he echoed Adolf Hitler in a tweet warning that the “weak are slaughtered” and the “strong survive”.
(Middle East Monitor, PC, Social Media)
