Rabbi Amnon Yitzhak, a hared rabbi who has been critical of the Zionist movement in the past, caused an uproar after he stated in an interview with Channel 14 that the Mapai party, which ruled Israel from its establishment until 1977, bore some responsibility for the deaths of religious Jews during the Holocaust and that the left-wing of the Zionist movement abandoned the Jews of Europe to be slaughtered by the Nazis.
Rabbi Yitzhak claimed that the leaders of the Zionist movement gave the haredim fewer permits to immigrate to Israel during the Holocaust because they intended to keep religious Jews in exile. In addition, he said that he is afraid that one of the left-wing reservists refusing to report for duty in protest against the government’s planned judicial reforms will commit a terrorist attack at the Knesset and thereby become the “Yigal Amir” of the left.
After the remarks caused outrage, interviewer Shimon Riklin apologized on Twitter and on the air after not condemning them immediately. “I didn’t notice it I didn’t hear it. We, of course, disavow it. It’s complete nonsense it has no basis in anything. Neither Mapai nor the Zionists nor anyone else is to blame for what the abominable Germans did in the Holocaust, and I apologize for all that was said here.”