Legendary former Mossad agent who led the operation to capture Holocaust mastermind Adolf Eichmann has expressed surprising support for the nationalist Alternative for Germany party.
The 91-year-old Rafi Eitan said in a video statement on his Facebook page Saturday that Israel appreciates the party's "attitude toward Judaism."
"In any case," he said in the video, "I'm sure that if you work wisely strongly and most important realistically … I'm sure that instead of 'Alternative for Germany,' you might become an alternative for all of Europe."
The party, AfD, won 12.6% of the vote in Germany's September election to win seats in parliament for the first time in over 60 years and become the country's third-biggest party.
Its leaders have expressed anti-Semitic statements and played down the crimes of the Nazi regime.
Eitan, a former senior citizens minister, appeared to endorse the party's hardline toward Muslim immigrants.
In a letter that accompanied the video, posted to AfD's official Facebook page, Eitan urged AfD members to close their borders "as soon as possible to prevent Muslim immigration."
"I wish you strength and that you will finally bring an end to the policy of open borders, which could lead to the Islamization of your country," he wrote.
Israeli Ambassador to Germany Jeremy Issacharoff condemned Eitan's statement as "sad and shameful."
"It is hard to believe how the person who captured Eichmann … is able to praise German right-wingers who so admire the Nazi past and wish on us that they become the alternative of Europe!" Issacharoff said in a tweet.
On September 25, a day after his party entered the German parliament, AfD leader Alexander Gauland sought to alleviate concerns voiced by the country's Jewish community.
"There's nothing in our party or in our platform that could or should in any way concern Jewish people who live here in Germany," Gauland told reporters.
When asked Sunday morning if he had any compunction over voicing his support for a party consisting of numerous anti-Semites and whose leader, Gauland, called Berlin's Holocaust Memorial a "memorial of shame," Eitan told the Ynet news portal: "I never heard about that."
Eitan was also asked whether he was aware that the party's deputy, Beatrix von Storch, who he personally congratulated in his Facebook video, is the granddaughter of Hitler's finance minister.
"I knew she was related but that doesn't bother me. We are already three generations after the Holocaust and the opinions and the entire world are changing before our eyes. The media, the internet, this entire system is causing profound social change across the globe and therefore we must approach people, communities, countries and parties in a global manner. There is no escaping this," Eitan said.
He went on to say he was confident that "the [AfD] party would help Israel on any matter we ask it to."
