Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu made clear on Monday evening that he had put the incident surrounding Deputy Chief of Staff Yair Golan’s remarks on Yom Hashoah behind him.

“The story behind the speech, I see it as a one-time incident and from here, all of us will continue to work together,” Netanyahu said at a toast with members of the IDF General Staff.

Speaking at a Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony last week, Golan appeared to draw direct comparisons between Israel and pre-war Germany.

“If there is something that scares me about the memory of the Holocaust,” said Golan, “it is the identification of horrifying processes that occurred in Europe in general and Germany in particular – 70, 80 and 90 years ago – and finding evidence of them here among us, today, in 2016.”

Golan later backtracked, claiming that his comments were not meant to compare the present political situation in Israel to pre-Holocaust Germany.

But the comments caused a firestorm, particularly among the right side of the political spectrum. Netanyahu himself openly lambasted Golan for the comparison on Sunday.

“The comparison, which came out of the Deputy Chief of Staff’s comments, to the trends that characterized Nazi Germany 80 years ago, is outrageous. They’re totally baseless. They should never have been said at any time, and certainly not at the time they were made [Holocaust Remembrance Day]. They harm Israeli society and cheapen the Holocaust,” Netanyahu said.

“The Deputy Chief of Staff is a fine officer with a great deal of merit, but his words in this regard are totally wrong and I utterly reject them,” he added.