Likud chairman MK Ariel Sharon yesterday lashed out at "the left" and accused it of bearing indirect responsibility for the fact that the Jews in Europe did not leave in time on the eve of the Holocaust.
In an interview with Channel Two News, Sharon noted that "the left" was trying to portray the Likud slogan "Barak is dividing Jerusalem" as incitement of the type that contributed to the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
"The left has always been the master of incitement, already since the 1930s, beginning with the blood libel regarding the murder of [Labor Movement figure Haim] Arlozorov. That is how the left was able to continue leading the Zionist movement," Sharon said.
"If not for that [delegitimizing the right wing], the leader of the Zionist movement would have been Ze'ev Jabotinsky [the leader of the Revisionists] and possibly the fate of the Jewish people would look very different, as the Jews would have responded, when it was still possible, [to the call] to leave Europe.
"The whole wheel of history might have looked different," Sharon said.
A Labor Party spokesman retorted that "Sharon and his comrades, who have credentials in uninhibited incitement that brought about the horrific precedent of the assassination of an Israeli prime minister, are the last ones who can preach to the Labor Party.
"No attempt to rewrite history and impute to [David] Ben-Gurion blunders that prevented the rescue of the Jews in the Holocaust will hide Sharon's responsibility for the Lebanon War.