MPs Slammed for Gaza-ghetto Comment

Yad Vashem chairman Avner Shalev has accused two British MPs of "malicious distortion" for comparing the conditions of a million Palestinians trapped in Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto under Nazi occupation.

Oona King, MP (Labor), and MP Jenny Tonge, MP (Liberal Democrats), visited the Gaza Strip about two weeks ago and said they were shocked by what they saw.

King, who is Jewish, wrote in a commentary in the Guardian that "the original founders of the Jewish state could surely not imagine the irony facing Israel today - in escaping the ashes of the Holocaust, they have incarcerated another people in a hell similar in its nature, though not its extent, to the Warsaw Ghetto."

Tonge compared the situation in Gaza to apartheid.

Shalev wrote the pair a letter on Sunday saying "whereas it is legitimate to disagree with Israeli policies and actions, it is grossly illegitimate and malicious to compare them to the most evil and massive crime in modern history in order to heighten the disagreement.