Sunday, January 27, 2013

Netanyahu links Holocaust lessons to Iranian threat

"The root of the issue today is not what happened, but how we can prevent it from happening again."
(Times of Israel) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday linked the threat of a nuclear Iran to the Nazis’ attempt to annihilate the Jewish people in an address marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

“Anti-Semitism has not disappeared and — to our regret — neither has the desire to destroy a considerable part of the Jewish People and the State of Israel. They exist and they are strong,” Netanyahu said at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting. “Holocaust-denial is being spread by one of the world’s major countries, not by a group or by individual countries or by marginal elements, but by Iran which, today, from the UN or any other platform, is the leader of Holocaust-denial while preparing for what they deem to be another Holocaust — the destruction of the state of the Jews.”

Netanyahu noted that Iran was not halting its “relentless and systematic” effort to gain a nuclear weapon. “We do not make light of these threats and we will prevent them. This is our primary mission as a government and as a people.”

“In the perspective of the almost 75 years that have passed since the Holocaust, what has not changed is the desire to annihilate the Jews. What has changed is the ability of the Jews to defend themselves,” said Netanyahu, referring to the Israeli military. “Nobody will defend the Jews if they are not ready to defend themselves; this is another lesson of the Holocaust…. Therefore, the root of the issue today, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, is not what happened, but how we can prevent it from happening again and this depends on the ability and the determination of the state of the Jews to defend itself against those who would destroy it.”

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