Liquea and Crif condemned this Sunday, May 11, the comments made the day before for the host and producer Thierry Ardisson in France 2 comparing Gaza with Auschwitz, the words for which he apologized on Sunday with “his Jewish friends.”
Gaza, “It’s Auschwitz, that’s all, that’s all there,” said Thierry Ardisson on Saturday night in the program “What time!” Presented by Léa Salamé, referring to the Nazi concentration and extermination field of Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland.
“We will be told ‘But you knew it’, that’s the crazy one,” he added, evoking the situation in the Gaza Strip.
“No criticism of Israel justifies to nazify it”
On Sunday, the International League against Racism and Anti -Semitism (LICRA) “once again condemned the trivialization of scandalous comparisons and environmental confusion.
The president of the Council Representative of Jewish institutions in France (CRIF), Yonathan Arfi, also launched: “No, Thierry Ardisson, Gaza is not Auschwitz!”, In the same network.
“The Holocaust memory is never called in the public debate as for those who want to return it against the Jews,” said Yonathan Arfi.
“From October 7, I deplore the anguish of all civil, Israeli and Palestinian populations since October 7 (2023, note of the editor. But for what other conflict are these comparisons with the Shoah? No criticism of Israel justifies nazify it,” he wrote.
According to him, “the situation in the Middle East is complicated enough and difficult not to need this guilty confusion.”
“The emotion was undoubtedly too strong”
In a statement sent to AFP on Sunday, Thierry Ardisson returned to his statements. “The emotion was undoubtedly too strong and my exaggerated point.” “I pray to my Jewish friends to forgive me,” he adds, remembering to have taken his position repeatedly against anti -Semitism.
He participated significantly in the “march against anti -Semitism”, which took place on November 12, 2023.
The program’s program also wanted to “express its understanding before the reactions and indignation raised by the comments made by Thierry Ardisson”, in X, remembering that the latter had apologized.
“What it was has dedicated many programs to the massacres of October 7, the emergence of anti -Semitism and holocaust. And we would like to reaffirm that in no way the holocaust can be trivialized,” the team added.
It also emphasizes that the “sequence in question came (…) after a long development on the horror of anti -Semitism in France.”
In the war against Hamas since the unprecedented attack perpetrated by the Palestinian Islamist movement on October 7, 2023, Israel has been blocking the entry of all humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip, where it is vital for the 2.4 million inhabitants since March 2.
For weeks, UN officials and NGOs have multiplied warnings about food, medicines and fuel shortage in the besieged Palestinian territory.
Stating that there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza, Israel says that the blockade implemented on March 2 aims to force Hamas to free hostages that have always been held there since the attack of October 7, 2023.
Source: BFM TV
