European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton condemned the comments made by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, in which he compared the EU's policy toward Israel to the behavior of Europe toward the Jews during the period of the Holocaust.

"Mr. Liberman's reference to Europe in the 1940s in this context is inappropriate and offensive to Europeans," Maja Kocijancic, the spokesperson of Catherine Ashton, told Haaretz.

Kocijancic said Ashton was dismayed after she heard Lieberman's comments.

"Europe's commitment to Israel's security cannot be questioned," she said. "This was reiterated in the Council conclusions on Monday, as was our condemnation of inflammatory statements by Hamas leaders that deny Israel's right to exist."

In an interview to Israel Radio on Tuesday, Lieberman was asked to react to the EU foreign ministers’ decision on Monday to condemn Israel for advancing the plan to build in E-1.

In reply, the foreign minister launched into a fierce, and perhaps, unprecedented attack on the EU. “I can tell you what I am not satisfied with,” said Lieberman. “I am not satisfied with the position of Europe, which once again in history is ignoring calls to destroy the state of Israel ... Europe is keeping silent. The call yesterday [Monday], what we saw, is not a condemnation of Hamas' statements but rather a call to the heads of Hamas to refrain from incitement. We have already been through this with Europe at the end of the 1930s and in the 1940s.”

The radio interviewer asked Lieberman whether he is accusing the EU of anti-Semitism. “It isn’t an anti-Semitic motive but rather it’s a narrow motive of interests,” replied Lieberman. “They [the EU] are sacrificing all values in favor of interests. Then too, back in the 1940s. They already knew by the start of the 1940s exactly what was happening in the concentration camps, what was happening with the Jews and didn’t exactly act. Today they admit that even in the 1930s they prevented Jews for coming to the land of Israel.”

Later on Tuesday, during a Hanukkah candle-lighting event for his party Yisrael Beiteinu, Lieberman repeated his criticism of the European Union saying that the European foreign ministers' decision against construction in the settlements was "unbalanced and unjustified."

"From the point of view of some of the European foreign ministers," he said, "the destruction of Israel is apparently something that is taken for granted." Lieberman added also that "the European Union's decision shows how much we can rely on those same countries that say that they guarantee Israel's security interests."

Hatnuah Chairwoman Tzipi Livni condemned Lieberman's comments. "Comparing Israel's situation today to the Holocaust is contempt for the Holocaust," Livni said during a conference organized by the Jerusalem Post in Herzliya. "It's an incorrect comparison, and incomprehensible. There is absolutely no similarity between the situation of Israeli citizens today to that of European Jews then. Not everybody is against us, and not everyone is anti-Semitic."

Labor Chairwoman Shelly Yacimovich added her own criticism of Lieberman, as well as of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, accusing them of diverting public discourse on the eve of elections from economic and social issues.