Netanyahu: We Will Prevent Second Holocaust
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged Monday not to allow Holocaust deniers the chance to carry out a second Holocaust against the Jewish people.
He spoke at the ceremony marking Israel's annual memorial day for the 6 million Jews killed by Nazis and their collaborators during World War II, but the event fell under the shadow of a U.N. anti-racisim conference in Geneva perceived in Israel as anti-Semitic.
Netanyahu criticized the president of Switzerland for meeting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the conference. Netanyahu said the Iranian leader, who has called for Israel to be wiped off the map, has denied the existence of the Holocaust.
"We will not allow the Holocaust deniers to carry out another Holocaust against the Jewish people. This is the supreme duty of the state of Israel. This is my supreme duty as prime minister of Israel," Netanyahu said, speaking at Yad Vashem, Israel's official Holocaust memorial and study center.
Earlier Monday at the conference in Geneva, the Iranian president accused Israel of being the "most cruel and repressive racist regime" and the West of using the Holocaust as a "pretext" for aggression against Palestinians. His comments prompted European diplomats to walk out of the conference.
Israeli President Shimon Peres slammed Israel's detractors for the anti-Semitic overtones that emanate from their criticism of Jerusalem's policy.
"Criticism of the Jewish State is also tinged with chilling anti-Semitism," Peres said. "Among those who collaborated with the Nazis, and those who stood by and let the Holocaust happen, there are those who criticize the one state that rose to grant refuge to Holocaust survivors. The one state that will prevent another Holocaust."
Netanyahu and Peres pretend to be leaders and spokesmen of the Jewish people, but we are not fooled by their arrogant rhetoric. They and their state, they say, will prevent another Holocaust. Actually, their strategy is to use the Jewish people and the Holocaust to further their own political goals. The Jewish people cannot not be saved or protected by those who have another agenda, which they place higher than the survival of the Jewish people. Those who know the history of the Holocaust know that that the Zionists did nothing to help the Jews escape from Europe at the time, and actually worked to prevent Jews from escaping to any land except Palestine.
Far from protecting Jews, Zionism puts Jews in danger by concentrating them all in a small corner of the world where they are surrounded by enemies. They then proclaim themselves saviors and protectors of their Jews, and undertake military actions with the pretext of protecting them. Actually these actions only serve to provoke their enemies further and place Jews around the world in danger.
The AP reports in the same article quoted above: “In its annual report on anti-Semitism, The Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism and Racism at Tel Aviv University found that anti-Jewish incidents dropped 11 percent in 2008, including 560 cases of violence, compared to 632 in 2007.
But Israel's military offensive against Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip reversed the trend. The researchers estimated that there were 1,000 incidents during January, more than 10 times the number in January 2008.
The study counted both violent incidents and verbal and visual expressions and said that 90 of the January incidents fit the violent category, three times the number of the previous January. While violent attacks dipped in February and March, verbal and visual anti-Israel and anti-Jewish expressions had not subsided.”
The lessons of all this should be clear: Only someone who has the Jews’ best interest at heart and no other agenda has the right to say that he is protecting Jews. And the only path to safety is for Jews to reject Zionism and to make that rejection known to the world.
How wise were the words of Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, spoken at a gathering of American rabbis and congregations in 1961: “I remember fifty or sixty years ago, many famous rabbis said that after all the Zionists did to undermine Jewish-gentile relations, it would be a miracle if destruction did not come upon the Jews of Europe… It is a serious danger to the Jewish people if we point to those who do not keep the Torah and deny G-d and call them the leaders of the Jewish people. All the nations are thereby misled to think that they speak in the name of Jewry, and thus they are transformed into anti-Semites. And really, if it were possible, even at the risk of our lives, to let the nations of the world know that these wicked men are not the representatives of the Jewish people, and that observant Jews have no connection with them, it would be one of the biggest religious obligations to do so.”