(Communicated by the Cabinet Secretariat)

PM Netanyahu reviews exhibition of posters for International Holocaust Remembrance Day (Photo: GPO)

At the weekly Cabinet meeting on Sunday, January 22nd, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the following remarks:

“This week we will mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The UN decided to mark this day at the initiative of the Israeli government and then Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, and it was an important decision.  It created an international framework for discussion of the Holocaust, certainly in several countries – for example in Europe – for which it is important to do so.

I was in the Netherlands last week and I was impressed that while this issue is being dealt with, it must be dealt with on a deeper level.  Israel has decided to mark during the same week, the struggle against anti-Semitism, a struggle which is being led by [Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs] Minister Yuli Edelstein, in new, creative and important ways.

Yad Vashem Council Chairman Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau and Yad Vashem Directorate Chairman Avner Shalev are here today.  Their work is making waves around the world, as is the assistance in the overall struggle given by the Jewish Agency led by our friend Natan Sharansky.

We are also marking 70 years since the Wansee Conference. Seventy years ago at a luxurious villa on the shores of a pastoral lake in one of the suburbs of Berlin, ten senior officials of the German Third Reich met and, over breakfast, decided to annihilate the Jewish people. They also decided on the ways to accomplish this.

Our friend Yossi Peled – a Holocaust survivor, former GOC Northern Command in the IDF and now a minister in the Israeli government – attended the ceremony this week.

Seventy years ago, the Jewish people were helpless.  They had no ability – neither political, nor military nor diplomatic – to organize their own defense, and one-third of our people were annihilated.  The difference between 1942 and 2012 is not the absence of enemies; that same desire to destroy the Jewish people and the State that arose – this desire exists and has not changed.  The difference is our ability to defend ourselves and to do so with determination.

The Jewish people and the Government of Israel have the obligation and the right to prevent another annihilation of the Jewish people or attack on its state.”

3 people like this post.
Unlike

Related posts:

  1. Full Video of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Address to U.S. Congress "So I say to President Abbas: Tear up your pact...
  2. Speech by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to a Joint Meeting of the United States Congress I recognize that in a genuine peace, we will be...
  3. Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad Throws Support for Israeli to Lead IMF Stanley Fischer, Governor of the Bank of Israel, is one...
  4. Prime Minister’s Statement on Adoption of the Palmer Report As advised in the report, Israel once again expresses its...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.