Singapore’s Israeli embassy shut down a politician’s comparison of the government’s pandemic response to the Holocaust.
The alarming conflation of public health measures with the murder of millions made by Brad Bowyer, a one-time Progress Singapore Party candidate, was untethered from reality, the embassy responded yesterday.
“The Holocaust was a genocide perpetrated by the Nazi regime to slaughter 6 million innocent Jews and comparing the obvious health benefits of vaccinations that have benefited billions around the world is not only in bad taste, but is also Holocaust Distortion by downplaying the horrors of the Holocaust,” they wrote.
It all started Tuesday when Bowyer published a picture of what looked like a Nazi concentration camp with captions suggesting that the Holocaust was caused by a single party’s control of the media and division of society.
Though some people chimed in to agree with Bowyer, saying they saw “nothing wrong” with his comparison, most ridiculed him as “insensitive” and a “disillusioned prick.”
Bowyer announced Wednesday that he would resign from his party just over a year after he was defeated in last year’s general election.
Bowyer followed up with some attempted spin, saying that he had meant to relay patterns he found similar from Singapore’s pandemic response to the Holocaust because he was concerned that the unvaccinated faced additional restrictions.
Seemed like a lot of hairs split in vain.
Singapore has not mandated vaccination for the general public but allows some greater liberties – such as sizes of social gatherings – for those who have. Starting this week, the vaccinated can enjoy dining and gathering in fives while the unvaccinated need to produce a negative test result to do so.
“We urge others to think twice before re-sharing such content – There is no equal for the tragedies that occurred during the Holocaust,” the embassy wrote.
About 70% of Singaporeans have been fully vaccinated.
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