Lucy Turnbull deletes Kristallnacht tweet
'I meant no offence. Anti-semitism, Nazism and The Holocaust was one of the very worst, horrendous catastrophes ever'
BUSINESSWOMAN Lucy Turnbull has deleted a tweet comparing climate change with Kristallnacht.
Responding to a tweet about flooding last Saturday, the wife of former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull tweeted, “It is tragic. It is like our #ClimateChange version of Kristallnacht – but instead of broken glass of sacked Jewish owned property, and burned books in Germany 1938, we have this. Destruction of treasured things, lives, homes smashed by storms, floods.”
The tweet sat unnoticed by the Jewish community until Wednesday when Zionist Federation of Australia president Jeremy Leibler replied to Turnbull.
“As a friend of the Jewish community, I think if you reflect on this analogy you will realise it is completely inappropriate and should be deleted,” Leibler said.
Turnbull replied, “I meant no offence. Anti-semitism, Nazism and The Holocaust was one of the very worst, horrendous catastrophes ever. So is climate change now.
“But I understand and respect that you do [not] want there to be any comparisons made. So I have deleted the tweet.”
I meant no offence. Anti-semitism, Nazism and The Holocaust was one of the very worst, horrendous catastrophes ever. So is climate change now. But I understand and respect that you do want there to be any comparisons made. So I have deleted the tweet.
— Lucy Turnbull AO
Anti-Defamation Commission chairman Dvir Abramovich said no one would deny the importance of climate change and Turnbull “is certainly entitled to her passionate views on this subject”.
But he said, “There is no analogue between climate change, and the floods that devasted communities here to the atrocities of 1938, and such historical trivialisations only taint the debate.
“Our language is powerful enough to discuss this monumental issue without the need to resort to the Holocaust playbook and to invoke the Nazis,” he said.
“Such tactics diminish people’s confidence in the strength and seriousness of the argument and so it is time for public figures to once and for all retire such analogies.”
comments