Netanyahu cancels meeting with German minister after dispute

Benjamin Netanyahu will not hold talks with the German foreign minister due to his intention to meet an Israeli NGO critical of Israel's treatment of Palestinians, the Israeli prime minister's spokesman said.

"The meeting is cancelled," said the spokesman, David Keyes.

An Israeli official speaking on condition of anonymity confirmed earlier on Tuesday that Netanyahu would cancel the meeting if Sigmar Gabriel also met Israeli rights groups Breaking The Silence and B'Tselem.

Breaking The Silence seeks to document alleged Israeli military abuses in the Palestinian territories, while B'Tselem has worked on a range of issues and has strongly opposed Israeli settlement building.

"We are learning through the Israeli media that Netanyahu, whom I have frequently met, wants to cancel this meeting because we want to meet critical representatives of civil society," Gabriel told German public television station ZDF.

"It is difficult for me to imagine this because that would be extremely regrettable... It is completely normal that we speak with civil society representatives during a visit abroad."

Gabriel added that it would be "unthinkable" to cancel a meeting with Netanyahu if he met critics of the German government during a visit to Germany.

Such disputes have arisen in the past between visiting foreign officials and Israel's government.

In February, Israel reprimanded the Belgian ambassador after the country's prime minister, Charles Michel, met with B'Tselem and Breaking The Silence during a visit to Israel.

However, there was no public rebuke from the government when British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson met with anti-settlement NGO Peace Now during a visit in March. 

Israel has occupied the West Bank for 50 years and Jewish settlement building in the Palestinian territory has drawn intense international criticism.

Israeli settlements are seen as illegal under international law and major stumbling blocks to peace efforts as they are built on land the Palestinians see as part of their future state.

New Holocaust denial

President Reuven Rivlin on Monday accused French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen of a new, dangerous form of Holocaust denial disregarding European responsibility for the World War II murder of Jews.

"The prevalent message arising from recent political statements is uniquely disturbing," Rivlin said at a ceremony for Israel's Holocaust Memorial Day.

"And in every place that message is the same: we are not responsible for the Holocaust. We are not responsible for the extermination of the Jews that occurred within our borders," Rivlin said in Lohamei Hagetaot, a kibbutz north of Haifa.

"For example, some two weeks ago a French presidential candidate denied France's responsibility for the deportation of its Jewish citizens to the Nazi concentration and death camps," he said.

Le Pen, who has advanced to the second round of the French presidential race, said on 9 April she did not "think France is responsible for the Vel d'Hiv," the 1942 round-up of Jews at a Paris cycling track who were then sent to Nazi death camps.

The Israeli government condemned her remark as "contrary to the historical truth, which has been expressed by French presidents who have recognised the country's responsibility for the fate of French Jews who died in the Holocaust."

In his speech on Monday, Rivlin warned of new form of Holocaust denial set to blur the boundaries between victims and perpetrators.

"The denial of responsibility of the crimes committed in the days of the Second World War is Holocaust denial of a new, more destructive and dangerous kind from that we have known till now," he said.

"Traditional Holocaust deniers belonged to the extreme fringes of the left and right" whose "success was minimal" while the new form "strives towards a more sophisticated goal" of "a denial of the distinction between a victim and a criminal."

"If I am the victim, I bear no responsibility; no responsibility for the horror that was; no responsibility to fight the renewed outbreak of anti-Semitism, the rise of xenophobia and the rise of nationalist violence," Rivlin said.

"We must wage a war against the current and dangerous wave of Holocaust denial."

Israel's official stance of avoiding contact with Le Pen's National Front, which is accused of anti-Semitism, was reaffirmed during the January visit of the party's secretary general Nicolas Bay.