No matter how hard one tries, it is difficult to understand why Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely is so proud of the May 28 educational cooperation agreement she signed with the government of Myanmar. She announced this “coup” in a tweet that also shows a photograph of her with a big smile for the camera, sitting beside a representative from Myanmar. She tweeted, “Continuing cooperation with our friends around the world.”
The “friend” in this case is a country condemned by the United Nations in 2017 for its “textbook ethnic cleansing” of the country’s Muslim Rohingya minority, including extrajudicial executions, rape and arson that drove more than 300,000 people out of their homes and into neighboring Bangladesh. These atrocities were widely reported in Israel, as everywhere else. The Foreign Ministry obviously knew all about them, as it did about the punitive arms embargo imposed against Myanmar by the European Union and the United States. These events are hardly ancient history. In fact, they took place during Hotovely's tenure as Israel’s top diplomat in her role as deputy minister of foreign affairs.
It seems that Hotovely failed to understand the outrage generated by her boasting of cooperation with a murderous regime tarred by ethnic cleansing even as Israel demands, rightly so, that the world never forget the Holocaust of European Jewry. Hotovely herself is involved in global campaigns against expressions of anti-Semitism. In a speech in March at the Global Forum to Combat Antisemitism, she warned of a troubling rise in this phenomenon. She also lashed out, justifiably so, at a recent speech by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that appeared to deny the Holocaust.
The publication of the agreement with Myanmar generated outraged reactions, mostly in the forms of reactions on Hotovely’s Twitter account. Replying to Hotovely's Tweet, one user, Pnina Katz, wrote: "How can you be proud of connecting with a government responsible for genocide and the punishment and expulsion of thousands of people? You have lost all shame."
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