The head of Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial on Tuesday criticized Israel’s U.N. ambassador for donning a yellow Star of David during an address to the U.N. Security Council, saying the stunt “dishonors both the victims of the Holocaust and the State of Israel.”
The very public dispute between the two Israeli officials comes despite calls for unity as the army is fighting Hamas on the ground in Gaza, and as pro-Palestinian students at campuses across the United States are vilifying Israel and overtly or covertly backing the Islamist terror group.
“The yellow patch symbolizes the helplessness of the Jewish people and being at the mercy of others. Today we have an independent country and a strong army,” tweeted Yad Vashem chairman Dani Dayan. “We are masters of our destiny. Today we place a blue-white flag on the lapel, not a yellow patch.”
Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Gilad Erdan told the Security Council Monday that he and his staff would wear the yellow stars, inscribed with the words “Never Again,” until members of the body condemned Hamas’s atrocities.
Dayan’s criticism came a day after the Yad Vashem chief urged caution in a statement to JNS with regard to comparing Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre with the systematic mass murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust. Such comparisons, he said, risked belittling or marginalize both the past and present events.
The Oct. 7 massacre was the deadliest one-day attack against the Jewish people since the Shoah, and leaders and journalists in Israel and abroad have drawn unprecedented direct comparisons between the Islamic terrorist group and Nazi Germany.
