JERUSALEM (AFP).- Israel's government on Sunday approved Dani Dayan as chairman of the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, ending a controversy sparked by ex-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's proposal to appoint a far-right nationalist.

Right-wing Netanyahu had proposed in August last year, his intention to appoint Effie Eitam as chairman of the iconic Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, which is visited by foreign leaders and hundreds of thousands of tourists annually.

Eitam, respected in Israel for his distinguished military career, led the nationalist religious Mafdal party in the early 2000s, and was known for his rhetoric against Palestinians and Israeli Arabs.

He had called for Israel to annex the entire West Bank, a position so extreme not even right-wingers in national politics openly support it.

It triggered outrage among Holocaust experts, who said Eitam's statements about Palestinians and Israeli Arabs ran counter to the values of the revered memorial.

The primary mission of Yad Vashem is to preserve the memory of Nazi Germany's extermination of six million mostly European Jews. The institution is also a hub for Holocaust research.

Netanyahu was ousted as premier in June, and was succeeded by a coalition government.

Dayan, 65, who served as Israeli consul in New York, was nominated on Sunday, a statement from Yad Vashem read.

A member of Justice Minister Gideon Saar's right-wing New Hope party, he is also a former director of the Yesha Council, which represents settlers in the occupied West Bank, where he has lived since the 1980s.

"Leading Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, is more than a position; it is a mission and one I take on with awe and reverence," Dayan said in a statement.

"On our shoulders rests the responsibility to research and educate, to document and disseminate, to validate fact-based historical truths about the Holocaust and reject all forms of distortion," he added.

Dayan takes over from Avner Shalev, who had directed the memorial between 1993 and 2020.


© Agence France-Presse