Israeli officials are demanding that CNN apologize for widely condemned remarks that host Christiane Amanpour made last week which they said amounted to “belittling” Holocaust victims.
“Diaspora Affairs Minister Omer Yankelevich sent a letter to CNN president Jeffrey Zucker on Sunday urging that Amanpour issue an ‘immediate and public apology’ for the ‘unacceptable comparison’ she made,” The Times of Israel reported.
Amanpour compared the Trump administration to Kristallnacht, a horrifying event that took place in November 1938 when Nazis “torched synagogues, vandalized Jewish homes, schools and businesses and killed close to 100 Jews,” according to History.com.
“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 of fact, knowledge, history, and truth,” Amanpour said. “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.”
Yankelevich noted in her letter that Kristallnacht is widely recognized as a “central starting point of the Holocaust.”
“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.”
The Times of Israel also noted that Israel’s consul-general to Atlanta, Anat Sultan-Dadon, wrote a letter to Richard Davis, CNN’s executive vice president of News Standards and Practices, over the segment.
“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,” Sultan-Dadon wrote. The consulate said it was “sincerely disappointed” by the way Amanpour chose to express herself and urged the anchorwoman and her employer to publish an apology.
Below are a sample of the responses that CNN received in response to their segment:
- Dan McLaughlin, Senior Writer National Review: “This comparison borders on Holocaust denial.”
- Allie Beth Stuckey, conservative commentator: “First of all, stop comparing politicians you don’t like & policies you don’t agree with to the freaking Holocaust. Second, it’s not conservatives burning books.”
- Eric Metaxas: “That ‘elites’ of her age have a grasp of history this HEART-STOPPINGLY tenuous is the most telling fact of modern life. If you want to know how we got here, look no further. The Boomers drank the Cultural Marxist Kool-Aid of 1968 & have been intellectual corpses ever since.”
- Mark Broome, journalist: “I know people who spout this ludicrous rhetoric and genuinely believe it’s an honest comparison. Brainwashing. It’s a helluva drug. Amanpour is also one of the most disgusting hacks among disgusting hacks.”
- StopAntisemitism.org: “Hey @CNN @camanpour please stop using the horrors of the Holocaust to justify an agenda. Our suffering is not yours to play political ping pong with.”
- Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council: “Despicable. @camanpour compares verbal fact checking of a POTUS to a Nazi pogrom in which dozens of Jews were murdered. Amanpour uses the book burning of Kristallnacht to reach this comparison thus ignoring the overall deadliness and human cost of the night.”
- Joel Petlin, educator and journalist: “It’s outrageous everytime a journalist compares the Trump presidency to the start of the #Holocaust. The fact that @camanpour does it on @CNN doesn’t give it any more legitimacy. Message to all Journalists: STOP USING THE HOLOCAUST TO SCORE POLITICAL POINTS!”
- Dovid Efune, Editor Algemeiner: “Awful from @camanpour . Using the Holocaust as a political cudgel is the height of insensitivity and disrespect. Did she mark Kristallnacht in previous years? Or only when politically opportune? The memory of the massacred millions is sacred. This segment is a desecration.”
- Ram: “This is what their extreme viewers on the fringe want to hear. Instead of providing news commentary, CNN appeals to the worst instincts among it’s viewers, much like Hitler appealed to the worst instincts among his supporters. In that aspect, CNN is similar to the Nazis.”
- Donald Trump Jr.: “These people are truly despicable.”
- Mike Huckabee: “What a bigoted, ignorant, and utterly false statement. WIll @jack @Twitter yank her off Twitter? In the meantime, it’s not conservatives who are ‘making a list’ to deny ppl employment, ‘mark’ them for harassment or hate.”
- Scott Adams: “Is this report crazy or evil? Hard to tell.”