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Patricia Bast Lyman, Republican National Committee committeewoman from the state of Virginia, has apologised to the US Jewish community after comparing Donald Trump’s Senate impeachment
trial to Nazi show trials in a Facebook message “I was saddened and disappointed to learn a comment I made on the current impeachment against President Trump in the US Senate on a post
referencing Nazi war trials was interpreted as anti-Semitic and insensitive. I immediately contacted leaders in the Jewish community and I see now how the comment could be misinterpreted. I
have therefore deleted it,” the official wrote on her Facebook page. > “I have always stood unequivocally with Israel and the Jewish > people…I am horrified that my comment would be
seen as diminishing > the memory of those millions who perished solely because they were > Jewish. That is not in my heart, has never been and never will be. I > am truly sorry that
anyone for a moment believed there was any > ill-intent on my part,” she added. The apology follows Bast Lyman’s response to a Facebook post by Fairfax County Republican Committee
Chairman Steve Knotts, who posted a photo from a trial in wartime Nazi Germany as Trump’s Senate impeachment trial unfolded. “At least some of those tried by the Nazis may have been actual
criminals, unlike the current debacle,” she wrote. The post and Bast Lyman’s comments, both of which have now been deleted, prompted some observers to accuse her of using “virulent
anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi language” and to demand her resignation. Others suggested that the Anti-Defamation League, a pro-Israel US-based NGO tasked with stopping “the defamation of the
Jewish people,” to get involved.