Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte To Dedicate Holocaust Monument In Israel
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Rodrigo Duterte, making the first visit to Israel by a president of the Philippines, will participate in the inauguration of a monument to Filipinos who rescued Jews during the Holocaust.
Duterte, whose four-day visit to the Jewish state begins on Sunday, will dedicate a memorial located in a park in Rishon LeZion, located near Tel Aviv in central Israel.
His trip will include a visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem, as well as meetings with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin.
Israel and the Philippines established diplomatic ties in 1957.
Duterte, who has been president since 2016, in that year compared his campaign against drug dealers to the Holocaust, and said he would kill dealers like Hitler killed Jews, Haaretz reported.
“Critics compare me to Hitler’s cousin,” he said. “Hitler massacred 3 million Jews … there’s 3 million drug addicts. There are. I’d be happy to slaughter them.”
“If Germany had Hitler, the Philippines would have …,” he said and pointed to himself.
Duterte apologized for the Hitler comments during his October 2016 Rosh Hashanah speech at a synagogue in Manila. Following the apology, he talked about the quality of Israeli arms and asked the congregants to “Please, ask your people who are here to sell us arms.”
He is facing two complaints of murder and crimes against humanity in the International Criminal Court.
Alyssa Fisher is a news writer at the Forward. Email her at [email protected], or follow her on Twitter at @alyssalfisher
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO