Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expelled a prominent activist from his Likud Party after the activist was filmed calling protesters “whores” and saying that he wishes “another six million would burn,” a reference to the Holocaust

The activist, Itzik Zarka, directed the epithets at protesters who were demonstrating on Saturday night against Netanyahu’s effort to weaken the judiciary. Weekly protests have occurred nationwide against the planned judicial overhaul, a key portion of which is set to advance to a final vote in the coming weeks

“You whores, burn in hell, burn in hell,” Zarka screamed at a demonstration near the northern Israeli city of Beit Shean. “It’s not for nothing that six million went. I’m proud, I’m proud. I wish another six million would burn”

His comments, which were condemned by a wide range of senior Likud politicians, were a crude allusion to a perceived ethnic split in Israel between supporters and opponents of the judicial overhaul[…]
The vast majority of the country’s founding left-wing elite was Ashkenazi, or Jews of European descent, and enacted discriminatory policies that disadvantaged Mizrahim, or Jews of Middle Eastern descent, particularly in the country’s early decades. Correspondingly, Mizrahi voters have long formed a key part of the right-wing Likud’s base, while the core of the country’s shrinking left has historically been Ashkenazi

Some supporters of the overhaul say that the Supreme Court is a holdout of an upper-class Ashkenazi elite[…]
On his Facebook account, which features a photo of him kissing Netanyahu on the cheek, Zarka has repeatedly apologized for what he called his “terrible words.” He wrote that he was accosted by protesters, that his words were taken out of context and that he is a descendant of a Holocaust survivor