At Holocaust commemoration, Netanyahu raps world for weak-kneed response to Iran

As the Jewish State marks Holocaust Remembrance Day and remembers the six million murdered by the Nazis during the Second World War, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at the commemoration ceremony held Sunday evening at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem about the lessons of the Holocaust and the Iranian threat. "Israel is a wellspring of innovation in the world, with its face to the future", he said. "But we still need to ask the question: Have the lessons of the Holocaust been learned?

"I believe that three of the lessons are: Strengthen yourself, educate for good and fight evil. The first lesson – strengthen yourself – first of all concerns us, the people of Israel who were abandoned and powerless before the waves of murderous hate that broke against us again and again, in every generation. We need to gird our strength for our independence to ensure that the next enemy cannot plot his schemes against us. Maintaining our strength is the first condition for our existence. It is also the necessary condition for widening the circle of peace with those of our neighbors who have come to terms with our existence."

"The second lesson – educate for good – means educating to accept the other and accept different ideas," the prime minister continued. "This is the awareness that lies at the base of Jewish thinking, that each human being is created in the image of G-d, that each human being has the right to freedom, to life, to choose his own path. This is the essence of a free society, this is the ground from which Nazi or fanatic ideology can never grow, ideology which strives for genocide and commits it also.

"This is how we educate children in the State of Israel, which is a light of tolerance in a region of darkness and zealotry. But this good state has a complementary side, and this is the third lesson of the Holocaust: to fight evil.

"A free society must ask itself what it should do in the face of evil forces who aim to destroy it and to trample human beings and their rights underfoot. There is no limitless tolerance, and we must draw the line. This is the question that all enlightened states must ask. The historic failure of the free nations before the Nazi beast was in the fact that they did not gather to oppose it in time, when it was still possible to stop it."

"We are witness today to the new-old fire of hate, hatred of Jews inflamed by organizations and regimes of extremist Islam, most of all Iran and its satellites. Iran's leaders are scurrying to develop nuclear weapons and freely announce their desire to destroy Israel but before these repeated declarations to wipe the Jewish state from the face of the earth, at best we hear faint protest, and even this is fading."

"We don't hear the forceful protest that is required, we don't hear the strong denouncement, nor the angry voice. But as usual, there are those who direct their criticism against us, against Israel…. The world accepts Iran's declarations of annihilation and we still don't see the international determination required to prevent Iran arming… I call on
the enlightened nations to rise and denounce this intention to destroy, and to act with real determination to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons."

Earlier in the ceremony, President Shimon Peres recalled the lessons of the Shoah, also emphasizing the need to respond with determination to the Iranian threat. "Israel will never forget two commands from the Holocaust," the president said. "The strong command to maintain an independent Jewish state, whose security is in its own hands, and with peace in its heart, and the command to take seriously threats of annihilation, Holocaust denial, and incitement to terror.

"It is our right and our obligation to demand from the nations of the world not to be indifferent as they were once, which resulted in millions of victims, including their own. The UN must hear the threats of annihilation coming from one state, which is a UN member, against another UN member state." Peres said that part of the Iranian nation itself is ashamed of the tyranny that controls it. "The Arab states are aware that the anti-Israel incitement of Ahmadinejad is aimed at deflecting attention from his real aim, which is hegemonic control of the entire region," Peres warned. "The world war broke out with the satanic incitement of the Nazis, with the claim that the Germans are a superior race."

Peres said that the fire in which Jewish books were burned will continue to burn in our hearts as an impossible separation from "six million of our brothers, men, women, elderly. From a million and a half of our children. An incredible potential for live, for abilities, annihilated, a loss never to return." He added that the state must bear
the cry of the Holocaust together with the din of its construction. "Our eyes will remain open to danger, at all times, and our hands ceaselessly extended in peace. In our hearts the Shoah, and in our deeds, hope."