Israeli Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a meeting with his Likud party in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, in Jerusalem June 14, 2021. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

i24 News – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the ejection on Sunday of an activist from his Likud party who mocked the Holocaust while others protested the judicial reform. The activist’s coarse remarks suggested cultural tensions brewing beneath Israel’s constitutional crisis.

Video circulated on social media showed Itzik Zarka cursing and spitting at demonstrators at a traffic junction near the town of Beit Shean on Saturday.

“It’s not for nothing that six million were killed,” he is seen shouting. “I’m proud that six million of you were burned!”

By targeting the European, or Ashkenazi, Jewish victims of the Nazi Holocaust, Zarka evoked the long-standing tensions between them and Sephardic (or Mizrachi) Jews of Middle Eastern descent who have traditionally made up the core of support for the conservative Likud.

“We shall not tolerate such disgraceful behavior in the Likud movement,” Netanyahu said in a statement on the ouster of Zarka, a prominent figure at party campaign events.

Denying the Holocaust, questioning its scale or celebrating it is punishable by five years’ in jail under Israeli law. The historical catastrophe is an issue that generally unites Jews, and Zarka’s remarks were condemned across the political spectrum.

Zarka said in a statement circulated on social media that his comments had been “taken out of context.”

Critics of the proposed judicial reforms argue that the Netanyahu coalition seeks to curb court independence while proponents say the overhaul would balance branches of government.