Unlike during Holocaust, Israel can defend itself today, Netanyahu says during Holocaust Remembrance Day speech

’No international pressure will prevent us from defending ourselves,’ he says

Read this article in:

Hamas’ invasion and massacre on Oct. 7 didn’t result in a Holocaust just because Israel can defend itself, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in his speech at the opening ceremony for the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day on Sunday evening.

While speaking at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, Netanyahu drew several connections between the two events. He began his remarks by discussing Major Moshe Yedidyah Leiter, an IDF officer in the Shaldag unit who was killed in battle in the Gaza Strip.

Leiter was named after his great-grandfather, who survived the Holocaust and later immigrated to Israel.

The prime minister quoted Leiter’s father who said at the mourning ceremony: “If the State of Israel were not established after the Holocaust, the image that would have been engraved in us is the photograph of the little boy in the Warsaw Ghetto with his hands up in the air, against the Nazi soldiers’ rifles. But the State of Israel exists and puts weapons in our sons’ hands. We did that so that we could defend ourselves against those who seek our destruction.”

Netanyahu continued, "Eighty years after the Holocaust, after the unspeakable genocide of six million Jews, a third of our people, the forces of evil rose up against us once again, driven by pure evil. They slaughtered, abused, raped, kidnapped.”

"The horrific terrorist attack of October 7th was not a Holocaust. Not because they lacked the intent of genocide, but because they lack the ability to carry it out. The intention is the same; the Nazis acted in order to completely destroy the Jewish people. The Hamas murderers are instructed to do the exact same thing,” the prime minister said.

"They kidnapped our brothers and sisters, and half of them are still held hostage, underground, in the dark. We are determined to release them all – all of them – from this dark inferno, those who are still alive and the dead.”

Emphasizing the common ideology of Hamas and the Nazis, the prime minister recounted how IDF soldiers discovered a copy of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf (the Nazi leader's book documenting the process by which he became antisemitic and including his political ideology) in a Gaza nursery.

"A straight line, as sinister as can be, connects the murderers of old to the murderers of today. But right here lies the difference between the Holocaust and the resurrection. Unlike in the Holocaust, when we were helpless against our enemies, today we have our own defensive might,” he noted.

Netanyahu appealed to the people of Israel to stand united in the fight for the nation's existence, which is being fought on two fronts.

"The first, the fanatical regime in Iran and its terror proxies, who act with the clear intention to destroy us; the second, the antisemitic volcano eruption that spits burning lava of lies against us, all around the world,” he said.

"Previous generations spread lies of how Jews poisoned wells, used the blood of children to make matza, and spread disease. Today, they spread new lies, that we are committing genocide and causing famine in Gaza,” Netanyahu continued.

"What genocide are they talking about? We do everything we can to avoid harming citizens. We take precautions that no army in history ever took. What starvation? From the beginning of this war, we let into the Gaza Strip countless trucks filled with food and medicine, to prevent exactly that.”

”What moral bankruptcy. The lie has become truth, truth turned into lies. As the prophet Isaiah said: ’Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that change darkness into light, and light into darkness.’”

Even at the most prestigious universities, people now believed those lies and harassed Jews because of it, Netanyahu charged.

"This is reminiscent of things that happened in German universities in the 1930s... Only this time, it is happening in America in 2024.”

The prime minister also slammed the International Criminal Court, which he said ”was established in response to the Holocaust and other horrors,” and today ”is considering issuing warrants against Israel’s leaders and commanders.”

"If such a step is taken, its intent will be to tie our hands and undermine our basic right to self-defense,” Netanyahu added.

Closing his speech, Netanyahu addressed world leaders.

"You will not tie our hands. If Israel is forced to stand alone, we will stand alone, and will continue to smite our enemies until we achieve victory.”

"I pledge that no pressure and no resolutions from any international forum will prevent us from defending ourselves from those who want to destroy us. Major Moshe Leiter and all our fallen soldiers died for that purpose. Their death was not in vain.”

Netanyahu switched to English for the final portion of his speech to reiterate his message that Israel would defend itself, even if it stood alone.

"But we know we are not alone because countless decent people around the world support our just cause. And I say to you, we will defeat our genocidal enemies. Never again is now!”