ZOA President Morton Klein
ZOA President Morton KleinIsrael National News

The president of the Zionist Organization of America blasted an American historian for comparing the January 6 capitol riots to the Holocaust, the 9/11 attacks and Pearl Habor.

Morton Klein called Douglas Brinkley’s assertion about the events of January 6 a "ridiculous, absurd, breathtakingly insensitive analogy" in an interview with Newsmax on Thursday.

He added that the comments made by Brinkley – a well known academic who is the history commentator for CNN – were an attempt to "paint an uglier picture and to frighten Americans.”

Klein said that he had lost many family members in the Holocaust and that they would "demand a profuse and heartfelt apology" from Brinkley for his allegation.

Brinkely made the remarks as part of a MSNBC panel segment in which he compared videos of the January 6 riots to former US President Dwight Eisenhower ensuring liberated concentration camps were filmed to record what happened during the Holocaust.

"How dare he show this breathtaking insensitivity to the Jewish people and to civilized people around the world by comparing this one-day, out-of-control protest to six million Jews and millions of others murdered?" Klein said.

He accused Brinkley of making the analogy due to being a “partisan, left-wing historian.”

"He wants to implant in the minds of American people as ugly and frightening a picture of January 6 as is possible, and that's why he made this analogy,” Klein contended.

He noted that the events of January 6 were "one very terrible day" and that only one person, protester Ashli Babbitt, died, while “in 9/11 and in Pearl Harbor, 3,000 people died in each one, and in the Holocaust, we had six million Jews murdered and millions of others.”

He added that the Holocaust was committed by Germany, which was a "major country with a major army and with major weapons.” He stressed that the capitol riot was "one-day protest that went out of hand, with no weapons.”

"No protesters killed anyone. There's only one person who died and that was a protester killed by policemen,” Klein said.

He went on to ask why Biden’s antisemitism envoy nominee, Deborah Lipstadt, has remained silent about comparisons between the January 6 riots and the Holocaust.

Calling Lipstadt “unfit” for the position, Klein said: "She has said nothing about this because she herself has compared Trump to Nazis and made videos comparing the Trump administration to the Nazi administration.”

(Israel National News' North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Israel National News articles, however, is Israeli time.)