Israeli officials have called on CNN to apologize for remarks made by its anchorwoman Christiane Amanpour comparing the behavior of the Trump administration to the Nazi regime’s behavior toward Jews during Kristallnacht.
Amanpour called the events of Kristallnacht an “attack on fact,” comparing the deportation and murder of innocent civilians and wanton destruction of property to President Donald Trump’s alleged dishonesty during his term as president.
”This week 82 years ago, Kristallnacht happened,” Amanpour said on Thursday. “It was the Nazis’ warning shot across the bow of our human civilization that led to genocide against a whole identity, and in that tower of burning books, it led to an attack on fact, knowledge, history and truth. After four years of a modern-day assault on those same values by Donald Trump, the Biden-Harris team pledges a return to norms, including the truth.”
Diaspora Affairs Minister Omer Yankelevich sent a letter to CNN president Jeffrey Zucker on Sunday requesting that Amanpour deliver an “immediate and public apology for the unacceptable comparison” she made.
“We find hereby the false equivalence made between the actions of a sitting US president and the atrocities of the Kristallnacht pogroms which were carried out by the Nazis eighty-two years ago belittling of the immense tragedy of the Holocaust,” Yankelevich wrote.
“Distortion and minimization of the Holocaust are deplorable lies that only encourage the evil voices of anti-Semitism. Employing the memory of the Holocaust for cheap shock value and to further a political agenda is a deeply troubling and offensive spin of historic and moral truths with dangerous implications.”
Atlanta-based Israeli Consul General to the Southeastern United States, Anat Sultan-Dadon, also sent a letter demanding an apology on Sunday to Richard Davis, CNN’s executive vice president of News Standards and Practices.
“The use of the 82nd anniversary of Kristallnacht by Amanpour for the purpose of this comparison is an affront to the memory of the Holocaust, those who perished and those who suffered through these unimaginable atrocities,” she wrote, adding that she is “dismayed” and “sincerely disappointed” by Amanpour’s remarks.
Sultan-Dadon also elaborated on the horrific crimes that took place on Kristallnacht, stating that about 90 Jews were murdered and over 30,000 Jews were deported to concentration camps and the night was the beginning of the Holocaust during which six million Jews were brutally murdered.
Former Israeli consul-general in New York Dani Dayan tweeted that Amanpour must be immediately dismissed from her position. “The foolish comparison Amanpour made between Kristallnacht and Trump must bring about her immediate dismissal from CNN,” Dayan wrote. “There is no immunity for Holocaust deniers.”
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If @CNN remains silent in the face of this disgraceful comparison it is basically saying their hate for Donald Trump is greater then the Nazi Genocide & murder of 6 million innocent people.
CNN must apologize & terminate
@camanpour If you agree than share it and demand it! https://t.co/nKJB7EH5ES— Chaskel Bennett (@ChaskelBennett) November 13, 2020
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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12 Responses
Leave poor Christiane Amanpour alone. After all she was following Holocaust denial ideas promoted by “Jewish” Kapo Democrats who released elections ad comparing Trump supporters (73,000,000 Americans) to Nazis.
CNN is a network where most Democrat morons who comment on this forum get their fake news from. It explains why they are so dumb.
Amanpour’s remarks were substantially correct. Trump’s mendacity about immigrants, black Americans and others is encouraging extreme right-wing attacks, including assaults by the Proud Boys and the Jews-will-not-replace-us chanters. The Disaspora Affairs minister’s letter to CNN is wrong and dangerous. Threats against non-Jewish minority groups always morph into anti-Semitic attacks.
I don’t follow Amanpour regularly, but what she said, as reported here, is right.
Ms. Amanpour’s comments are despicable. She should be condemned in the harshest terms. CNN should be ashamed of themselves.
Now for some introspection. Aren’t we also guilty of Holocaust denial when we compare any politician that we disagree with to Hitler. Like Deblassio and Cuomo. They were and are both wrong. But Nazis? Perhaps Amanpour is a bit of Midah Kineged Midah?
To Wolfman: I abhor the accusations of “Nazi” and “fascist” that are thrown around too loosely, against any politician, even right-wing nuts who, nevertheless, are not proposing the mass slaughter of an ethnic or minority group.”Nazi” and “fascist” are very serious accusations and should be used only when applicable. One of the ugliest misuses of the “Nazi” accusation is made by frum Israeli Jews against Israeli police.
huju, you are filthy Holocaust Denial, end of story.
h-u-j-u:
Actually, one of the most righteous uses of the the term Nazi is when applied to Israeli “police” who one-up the Nazi police, in their (the Israeli police) heartless, senseless and evil brutality towards their own brethren.
It’s interesting how so many are upset at this Iranian woman for her comments. The main problem with her point is that Kristallnacht was a pogrom against Jews, in the physical sense, not an abstract attack on truth, etc.
She is anyways wrong, regardless of the comparison. But it is interesting that those who worship the Holocaust god are fuming at this – yet they don’t protest the Zionists’ murderous treachery during WW II and afterwards.
1.) Amanpour’s statement was indeed obscene, as are all similar gratuitous, irredeemably hackneyed Nazi references. If everyone one doesn’t like is a “Nazi” or “Hitler”, then no one is. The terms lose all meaning. Godwin’s Law is quite applicable.
2.) That does not make Amanpour a “Jew Hater”.
3.) To assert such a characterization would be reckless even in an editorial. To do so in what purports to be a news article? It would not be hyperbole to characterize that as itself a form of obscenity.
3.) The Zionist chutzpah in Dani Dayan’s statement should also be disavowed. Freedom of speech means nothing if not tolerance for the expression of abhorrent views. It is certainly not his place, nor that of any Zionist nor even any Jewish leader, to dictate to any given nation, jurisdiction, corporation, or other entity the parameters of acceptable speech and discourse.
@ huju: Your characterizations are at best tendentious. One need not know all that much about the incidents in-question involving the Proud Boys to know that at a minimum, they are not nearly as simple as you assert. That you make not a single mention of the ANTIFA and BLM terrorism– both in general, and, specifically, that which the Proud Boys claim to have been (and in all likelihood were) responding-to, already tells us more than enough about where you are coming from.
As for “Jews Will Not Replace Us“, while those associated with the slogan (at least the ones I am aware of) are admittedly of an unsavory sort, the sentiment itself is not necessarily unreasonable. The tragic fact is that a rather staggeringly disproportionately high number of those who aggressively promote mass immigration into majority-white countries are Jews (overwhelmingly secular ones). Worse, a number of said Jews have been brazenly open in stating their explicit desire and goal to replace the whites who founded these very countries with nonwhite immigrants from the third-world.
Another extremely germane fact about the now-infamous 2016 Charlottesville affair that is completely omitted by ANTIFA apologists such as yourself is that it was ANTIFA thugs and terrorists who attacked the right-wing and white identitarian protestors. And that it was the latter who had gathered lawfully.
“Trump’s mendacity about immigrants, black Americans”? What an odd statement. If the President is guilty of anything with regard to blacks, it would be of excessively pandering to them and whitewashing their staggeringly high rates of violent crime. As for immigrants, I wonder if you aware of this 2006 column by Paul Krugman. Would you also accuse him of “mendacity”? I could also ask the same about any number of statements (as well as, where applicable, policies) that were made by any number of other Democrats, including those as prominent and recent as Bill and Hillary Clinton, and even Barack Obama.
Your comments are little more than the inverse of the type of reflexive pro-Trump propaganda that you self-righteously pride yourself in condemning. The irony of this is apparently lost on you.
whoever arguing with huju on this forum is wasting time. huju is a Marxist Holocaust denial.
No need to worry.
This רשעאנטא has already issued her boilerplate “apology”.
Re Dereck Eretz Kadmah’s second comment: I am not an apologist for ANTIFA. I don’t think I ever made a comment about ANTIFA.
As for Paul Krugman’s 2006 column, I remember it so well that I knew what you were referring to before I clicked on your link. And I like that column. Krugman’s columns are based on facts. “Mendacity” means, among other things, based on falsehood. Hence, I have not accused Krugman of mendacity.
As for my self-righteous pride, I try hard not to have any, and I think you have no basis for saying that I do.