Israel capitulates to putin’s WWII revisionism

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At the end of this month, days apart, two international ceremonies will be held to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation from the Nazis: the first at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and the second at the site of the concentration camp itself in Poland, writes Ofer Aderet for haaretz.com.

Holding more than one ceremony dedicated to a major anniversary is not that unusual, but there is more than that going on here. Behind the desire to honor the memory of the victims lie other, less honorable interests. 

One might assume that it is the Israeli government that is behind an event of this magnitude, one that involves world leaders and is being held at Yad Vashem. But in fact, the force behind it is someone unknown to most Israelis: Moshe Kantor, a russian-Jewish billionaire and oligarch who is president of the European Jewish Congress.

Is there any connection between the fact that Kantor is close with the kremlin (so much so that he has been called “putin’s man”) and the choice to allow President putin to speak but to deny Duda, the Polish president, the same privilege? No one will openly admit as much, of course, but anyone who’s been following the diplomatic tensions between russia and Poland, which reached a peak last month, may be wondering who had an interest in standing by the russian president at this time and shunning his Polish counterpart.

The decision to allow putin but not Duda to speak could be perceived as Yad Vashem and the Israeli government taking putin’s side – a move that in this context amounts to tacit support for putin’s distorted narrative concerning the division of Poland at the start of World War II and the whitewashing of the Soviet Union’s handshake with Hitler.

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