'Never again is now,' Netanyahu says on Holocaust Remembrance Day

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gives his speech at the Holocaust Remeberance Day ceremony held at Yad Vashem on May 5, 2024.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on the International community not to prevent Israel from defending its citizens as it fought a genocidal enemy akin to the Nazis from World War II.

“Never again is now,” Netanyahu said Sunday during a special address on Holocaust Remembrance Day at a Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.

“I say to the leaders of the world. No amount of pressure, no decision by any international forum will stop Israel from defending itself.

“As the Prime Minister of Israel, the one-and-only Jewish state I pledge here today from Jerusalem on this Holocaust Remembrance Day” that “If Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will stand alone.

“But we know we’re not alone because countless decent people around the world support our jobs cause, and I say to you, we will defeat a genocidal enemy,” Netanyahu said.

Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony at Yad Vashem. May 5, 2024 (credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)

Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony at Yad Vashem. May 5, 2024 (credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)

The ceremony opened Israel’s first Holocaust Remembrance Day in the aftermath of Hamas’s invasion of Israel on October 7, in which over 1,200 people were killed and 252 were seized as hostages.

Since then Israel has battled two Iranian proxy groups, Hamas in the south and Hezbollah in the north, and survived its first direct missile attack from the Islamic Republic.

In the wake of October 7, Jews around the globe have experienced an unprecedented wave of antisemitism.

Netanyahu said that Israel’s enemies erred in attacking the Jewish state, believing it was weak, divided, and lacking in determination.

“They were wrong. At the moment of truth we stood together, shoulder to shoulder, full of resilience, determination, and power,” Netanyahu said, as he referenced the thousands of Israelis who rose up to defend the country in the last eight months.

He pledged to destroy Hamas in Gaza and to return the remaining 133 hostages.

“We are committed to returning them home to their families and putting an end to their ongoing nightmare,” Netanyahu stated.

Israel, he said, continues to fight a war on two fronts, first “against the fanatic regime in Iran and its terrorist affiliates, who openly strive to destroy us.”

Prime Minister addresses antisemitism worlwide

Second, against “the antisemitism that was hidden in Western countries since the Holocaust” but which has returned with “all its ugliness,” Netanyahu said.

Jews and Israel are facing a wave of lies that are reminiscent of antisemitic tropes of the past, Netanyahu said, as he compared the charge that Israeli is starving Palestinians with the accusation leveled against Jews in Europe that they had poisoned water well or used the blood of children to bake matzahs.

He dismissed as false charges that Israel was carrying out genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza, stating, “We are taking steps that no army in history has taken. What kind of hunger are they talking about? After all, since the beginning of the war, we have been allowing trucks of food and medicine to be brought into Gaza to prevent starvation, to prevent a humanitarian crisis.”

“As in the old days, the false accusations are not directed at us because of things we do, but because of the very fact that we exist,” Netanyahu said.

Such false charges have made their way to the most elite university campuses in the West, where “Jewish students, supporters of Israel, receive threats, hate speech and harassment every day.

“They are afraid to be seen with any Jewish symbol… Jewish lecturers and researchers are beaten and humiliated. Inciting thugs break into classrooms [and] smash windows,” Netanyahu said.

This description is not about Germany of the 1930s, he said, it’s about what is happening in America of the year 2024.

“Our brothers and sisters in the diaspora” should know that “we stand together in the face of hatred here and the face of hatred there,” Netanyahu said.

He took issue in particular with reports that the International Criminal Court stood to issue arrest warrants against top Israeli leaders and IDF commanders.

It was “scandalous,” he said, that the court was founded in the aftermath of the Holocaust to ensure that such atrocities would “never again” happen is now considering acting against Israel.

“If such a step is carried out, it will tye our hands, thereby thwarting our most fundamental basic right as a country, the right to defend ourselves. What an absurdity, and what a distortion of justice and history,” Netanyahu bitterly stated.

“Such a step would put an indelible stain on the very idea of justice and international law,” Netanyahu said, adding that he had a message for the court, “You will not tie our hands.”