SPEAKING before the Jews in Makati, President Rodrigo Duterte assured Tuesday that his recent remark likening himself to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler would never happen again.
"I would like to greet you on your holy day and I would like to apologize and it comes from the heart. It was not intended; it's just a slip of the tongue," Duterte said in his visit to the Beit Yaacov Synagogue, the Jewish Association of the Philippines.
“Please accept my apology. It will never happen again. We will always be friends. Even if we don’t have the same structure of government, we share a common denominator, we only believe in one God,” he added.
On Sunday, the President apologized to the Jewish community, saying he never wanted to denigrate the memory of about six million Jews killed during the Holocaust.
His apology came after his statement that he would be “happy to slaughter” drug addicts in the country, the same way Hitler did to Jews.
But Duterte clarified that he was not being racist when he issued the statement.
“It has nothing to do with the memory of the Jews because in my country we do not tinker the memory of our ancestors,” the President said.
“I mentioned the Jewish and that was what terribly wrong, and for that I apologize. But I am not one of the racist members of this republic,” he said. (Sunnex)
