Netanyahu says lessons of Holocaust guide him
Associated Press
JERUSALEM
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opened Israel’s annual memorial day for the 6 million Jews systematically killed by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II by saying the lessons of the Holocaust guide him daily and issuing a warning to Israel’s enemies not to test it.
The Nazis and their collaborators wiped out a third of world Jewry, and Netanyahu’s remarks illustrated how decades later the Holocaust is still a central part of Israel’s psyche. The state of Israel was established just three years after the end of the war, and hundreds of thousands of survivors made their way here.
Speaking at the main ceremony at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, Netanyahu said Israel’s arch-enemy Iran, as well as the Islamic State group, are “publicly striving to destroy us.”
Netanyahu said the lesson of the Holocaust is that “we must be able to defend ourselves by ourselves against all threats and any enemy.” He said this lesson guides him “every morning and every evening.”
Netanyahu said Israel has transformed itself into a strong nation with one of the “strongest defensive forces in the world” and warned “those that seek to destroy us will put themselves in danger of destruction.”
World powers knew of the mass destruction of Jews already in 1942, and if allies would have intervened by bombing the death camps, millions of people could have been saved, Netanyahu said.