President Reuven Rivlin said, Monday evening, that a new disturbing form of Holocaust denial is emerging. Citing examples from France, Poland and the Ukraine during the closing ceremony of Holocaust Remembrance Day at the Ghetto Fighters Museum in northern Israel, he said, “in every place that message is the same: we are not responsible for the Holocaust. We are not responsible for the extermination of the Jewish people which occurred within our borders.” He added, "The denial of responsibility of the crimes committed in the days of the Second World War is Holocaust denial of a new, more destructive and dangerous kind from that we have known till now.”
Rivlin said, “This is not a denial of the very existence of the Holocaust, but a denial of the distinction between a victim and a criminal. This is a denial that seeks to annul the political and moral responsibility that must stand at the heart of memory of the Holocaust for generations to come. Victimization is the most comprehensive and effective note of exemption from responsibility.”
He concluded, "We must wage a war against the current and dangerous wave of Holocaust denial. We must resist the renunciation of national responsibility in the name of alleged victimhood. As a society and as a state, we must resist unholy alliances with extreme right-wing elements. Although it may seem safe to think that we share common interests with these parties, we must recall that there was and will be nothing in common with anti-Semites in any shape or form.”