JERUSALEM, 24 May 2004 — Israeli Justice Minister Tommy Lapid said yesterday that images of an elderly Palestinian woman searching through the rubble of her Rafah home reminded him of his grandmother who was killed during the Holocaust.
“When I saw the images on television of an old Palestinian woman on her knees in the process of looking for her medication in the debris that was once her home, it reminded me of my grandmother,” Lapid told military radio.
“I am not making any comparison between Israel and the Nazis. I am merely expressing the association of ideas that came to mind when I saw those images,” the minister added.
“I was in the United States last week, and I noticed that we look like monsters to the rest of the world,” Lapid said, condemning Israel’s “crazy” plan “to destroy 2,000 to 3,000 homes in Rafah.”
