President Rodrigo Duterte visited on Tuesday night a Jewish synagogue to reiterate his apology for his statement comparing his intensified war on drugs and Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s killings of Jews during the Holocaust.
”I came here with a prepared speech but I will not read it…First, I would like to greet you on your holy day and second, I would like to apologize and it comes from the heart,” President Duterte said in his speech in front of the Jewish Association of the Philippines members at the Beit Yaacov Synagogue in Makati City.
”It was not intended…It has nothing to do with the memory of the Jews because in my country we do not tinker with the memory of our ancestors,” he added.
Last Sunday, President Duterte apologized to the Jewish community all over the world, saying he has no intention to derogate the memory of the six million Jews murdered by the Germans when he said he would be “happy to slaughter” three million drug addicts in the Philippines.
The President admitted that he was “terribly wrong” when upon arrival from two-day official visit in Vietnam at 2 a.m. last Friday, he mentioned Hitler murdered millions of Jews.
”And for that I apologized. Please accept my apology. It will never happen again. We will remain friends,” the President said at the Jewish synagogue.
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