NIR’OZ, Israel: Argentina’s President Javier Milei on Thursday likened Hamas’s attacks on southern Israel to the Holocaust, after touring a kibbutz targeted in the October 7 raids.
Milei joined Israel’s President Isaac Herzog on a visit to Nir Oz near the border with Gaza, where residents were killed or taken hostage by the Palestinian militant group.
They were accompanied by former hostage Ofelia Roitman, an elderly Argentinian national who moved to Israel in 1985, making her first visit back to the farming community since she was released.
Milei, who was elected in November and is on his first official state visit as president, has appeared visibly emotional during his time in Israel, and said Thursday’s tour was “very moving.”
He again gave his backing to Israel’s fight-back against Hamas, calling the Palestinian Islamists a “terrorist group” who had committed “a crime against humanity.”
“The free world can’t remain indifferent in this case, as we see clear examples of terrorism and anti-Semitism and what I would describe as 21st century Nazism,” he said.
“When we hear about the methods that were used this time, it reminds us of the atrocities of the Holocaust,” he added, according to remarks translated from Spanish by Herzog’s office.
Many traumatized Israelis have likened the attacks, which left 1,160 dead according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli statistics, to the horrors of the Holocaust.
A total of 132 of the 250 hostages taken are still in Gaza, but 29 are presumed dead, Israel has said.
But the head of Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem memorial center, has described comparisons as “simplistic... even if there are similarities in the genocidal intentions, sadism and barbarism of Hamas.”
“The crimes that took place on October 7 are on the same level as Nazi crimes, but they are not the Shoah,” Dani Dayan told AFP last year, using another term for the Holocaust.
Milei, who was raised in a Catholic family but has studied Jewish scripture, placed a wreath near the eternal flame at the Hall of Remembrance at Yad Vashem on Wednesday.
He arrived in Israel on Tuesday on a four-day visit and immediately announced plans to move the Argentinian embassy to Jerusalem.
Only a handful of countries have their embassy to Israel in Jerusalem, rather than Tel Aviv, and any international recognition of the city’s status as a capital is deeply controversial.
Hamas, which runs Gaza, said in response that Jerusalem remains “occupied Palestinian land.”
Argentina’s Milei likens Hamas attack on Israel to the Holocaust
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Argentina’s Milei likens Hamas attack on Israel to the Holocaust
- Milei joined Israel’s President Isaac Herzog on a visit to Nir Oz near the border with Gaza
- Milei has appeared visibly emotional during his time in Israel and said Thursday’s tour was “very moving”
Fledgling radio station aims to be ‘voice of the people’ in Gaza
- The electricity crisis is one of the most serious and difficult problems in the Gaza Strip, says Shereen Khalifa Broadcaster
DEIR EL-BALAH: From a small studio in the central city of Deir El-Balah, Sylvia Hassan’s voice echoes across the Gaza Strip, broadcast on one of the Palestinian territory’s first radio stations to hit the airwaves after two years of war.
Hassan, a radio host on fledgling station “Here Gaza,” delivers her broadcast from a well-lit room, as members of the technical team check levels and mix backing tracks on a sound deck. “This radio station was a dream we worked to achieve for many long months and sometimes without sleep,” Hassan said.
“It was a challenge for us, and a story of resilience.”
Hassan said the station would focus on social issues and the humanitarian situation in Gaza, which remains grave in the territory despite a US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas since October.
“The radio station’s goal is to be the voice of the people in the Gaza Strip and to express their problems and suffering, especially after the war,” said Shereen Khalifa, part of the broadcasting team.
“There are many issues that people need to voice.” Most of Gaza’s population of more than 2 million people were displaced at least once during the gruelling war.
Many still live in tents with little or no sanitation.
The war also decimated Gaza’s telecommunications and electricity infrastructure, compounding the challenges in reviving the territory’s local media landscape. “The electricity problem is one of the most serious and difficult problems in the Gaza Strip,” said Khalifa.
“We have solar power, but sometimes it doesn’t work well, so we have to rely on an external generator,” she added.
The station’s launch is funded by the EU and overseen by Filastiniyat, an organization that supports Palestinian women journalists, and the media center at the An-Najah National University in Nablus, in the occupied West Bank.
The station plans to broadcast for two hours per day from Gaza and for longer from Nablus. It is available on FM and online.
Khalifa said that stable internet access had been one of the biggest obstacles in setting up the station, but that it was now broadcasting uninterrupted audio.
The Gaza Strip, a tiny territory surrounded by Israel, Egypt, and the Mediterranean Sea, has been under Israeli blockade even before the attack on Oct. 7, 2023, which sparked the war. Despite the ceasefire, Israel continues to strictly control the entry of all goods and people to the territory.
“Under the siege, it is natural that modern equipment necessary for radio broadcasting cannot enter, so we have made the most of what is available,” she said.
