Versión Español
Español Israeli officials expressed their disapproval this week of a speech given by Ecuador Ambassador Horacio Sevilla in the United Nation in which he criticized Israel’s relationship with Palestine.
The Israeli government described the speech of the Ecuadorian ambassador in which he compared Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians to the Nazi regime as “inaccurate” and “plagued with historical deformations.”
“Such comparisons distort history and trivialize the genocide in which more than six million Jews were systematically killed, together with other minorities like gypsies, homosexuals, the handicapped and the political opposition,” a statement read.
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“By order of the Prime Minister and the Minister of the Exterior Benjamin Netanyahu … the Commissioner of Business Enrique Ponce has been summoned to an urgent meeting about the shameful speech given by the Ambassador of Ecuador Hoarcio Sevilla this weekend,” the statement said.
Both Director of International Relations of the Simon Wiesenthal Center Shimon Samuels and Representative for the Latin American Simon Wiesenthal Center Ariel Gelblung decided to express their indignation to President of Ecuador Rafael Correa, in hopes that he would publicly apologize for Ecuador’s slander of the Jewish people.
For his “atrocious revisionism, Sevilla should be expelled from diplomatic service.”
Samuels explained that there has never been a Palestinian state and that if the Arabs of the British Mandate had accepted the 1947 resolution of the partition of the United Nations, they would be approaching their 69th anniversary with the State of Israel.
“Eight hundred and sixty thousand Jews were subsequently expelled from Arab countries where they had resided for 2,000 years. Only the Palestinians were left as refugees by their fellow Arabs in order to perpetuate a conflict with Israel.”
Executive Director of the Latin American Jewish Congress Claudio Epelman also commented about what happened, saying that that the Ambassador’s speech demonstrated absolute ignorance “of what happened in Germany and the situation in the Middle East, as well as hurting the feelings of Holocaust survivors and families.”
“We are surprised that a person that has such a high responsibility like representing his country before the world could make such a trivializing declaration about the worst tragedy in human history; in this sense, it would be ideal that the Ambassador reflect on his words.”
Sevilla’s speech to the United Nations
Sevilla gave the speech during a celebration of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People in the General Assembly of the United Nations.
He demanded “the immediate establishment of the independent state of Palestine, which must have the pre-1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital and coexist with the State of Israel in conditions of peace and security.”
The speech also included quotes from Cuban Dictator Fidel Castro’s speech to the United Nations in 1979:
“We repudiate with all our force the persecution and genocide that in the past unleashed Nazism against the Hebrew people. But I cannot remember anything more similar in our contemporary history than the persecution and genocide that is carried out today by imperialism and Zionism against the Palestinian people.”
Sources: La República; El Comercio; Radio Sucre.
