A former senior official and newspaper editor from Bangladesh told a television audience last week that Adolph Hitler should have been more thorough when it came to the Jews. The TV host seconded the opinion.
As reported by the editor and publisher of the Weekly Blitz, peace activist Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, Mohammad Asafuddowlah said, "My soul bleeds when I recall the recent atrocities against the people of Gaza. And if I was a young man, I would have gone to Gaza with a weapon to exterminate Israel."
It is not just Israel's extermination Asafuddowlah seeks, however. "Now I believe that what Adolph Hitler did during the Holocaust was absolutely correct. He should have done this more extensively, to eliminate the total Jewish population from the world," he added.
Abdul Hye Sikder, the host of the TV program on which Asafuddowlah appeared, reacted to the genocidal statements with agreement, echoing the sentiments. Sikder, Choudhury reports, was at one time a leading activist of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party.
Assafuddowlah has been described by Bangladesh's New Age newspaper as "one of the finest civil servants of Bangladesh and a personality crowned with many qualities." He served in the public sector for 35 years, as chairman of state-run corporations and director-general of various government ministries. He was also the editor-in-chief of The Bangladesh Today, a leading English-language daily.
The talk show during which Asafuddowlah made his anti-Semitic remarks, Ekanto Shonglap ("Exclusive Dialogue"), is broadcast on Diganta Television.
"Diganta Television is continuing spreading religious hatred through its programs and most of the programs in the channel are anti-United States, anti-West and anti-Israel," according to the Weekly Blitz's Choudhury.
Choudhury has been imprisoned, beaten and faced the death penalty for his anti-Islamist activities in his home country, including as an outspoken proponent of contact with Israel and Israelis.