Guillermo Zapata apologizes, says he has always liked “black, cruel humor.”
JPOST
Berlin – A Spanish city councilman tweeted approvingly of Jews burning in an ash tray–a reference to the Nazi’s use of ovens to exterminate European Jewry.
According to a translation of the tweet, Guillermo Zapata, a city councilman in Madrid who is now in charge of Madrid’s department of culture as of Saturday, wrote” how would you fit five million Jews in a Seat 600 (like a Fiat 500)? In the ashtray.”
Zapata is a member of the left-wing party Ahora Madrid, which is the same party as Manuela Carmena, the new mayor of Madrid. The party’s views on Israel are extremist, mirroring the goals of the Boycott, Sanction, Divestement movement targeting the Jewish state.
According to the English-language Spanish website ,The Spain Report, Zapata wrote dehumanzing and anti-Jewish tweets in 2011 and 2012.
The website noted that he apologized in a tweet on Saturday evening and rejected that he was an anti-Semite. He said that politicians should know better and said that he had: “always liked black, cruel humor […] as a healthy expression to laugh at the horror humans create.”
The Spain Report said journalists called for mayor Carmena to fire Zapata. The editor of El Español, Pedro J. Ramírez, a former editor of El Mundo, wrote: “In no democratic country would someone with public responsibility be capable of writing a tweet like Zapata’s. The first test for Carmena.”
In a statement issued to The Jerusalem Post, the Jewish community of Madrid said it “expresses its concern” for the antisemitic tweets and has requested from the new mayor to dismiss Zapata.
