“We will never forget the victims. We will never allow another Holocaust to take place,” Netanyahu vowed.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, addressing the International Holocaust Remembrance Day Event on Thursday at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, warned of the rise of antisemitism – “the insatiable hatred for the Jewish people” – particularly from Iran.

“This day of commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust is fraught with significance. We fulfill at once our obligation never to forget, because every victim had a story, a family, a childhood, a future cut short,” Netanyahu said.

“So, as we remember the victims, and this crime, we must never forget the roots of our greatest disaster – the insatiable hatred for the Jewish people. This hatred culminated in murder, but it began with intolerance.”

While the Holocaust is behind the Jewish people, “the hatred and intolerance that drove it is not,” the prime minister continued. “Anti-Semitism, which is the world’s oldest hatred, is experiencing a revival in the enlightened West; you can see this in European capitals, just unbelievable. The rise of anti-Semitism, the resurgence of anti-Semitism that is happening, and few would have imagined that this would be possible a few years ago,” he noted.

The Primary Threat – Iran

While the West’s anti-Semitism is a dangerous, that emanating from Iran is worse, Netanyahu said.

“The greatest danger that we face, of the hatred for the Jewish people and the Jewish state, comes from the East. It comes from Iran. It comes from the ayatollah regime that is fanning these flames and calling outright for the destruction of the Jewish state.”

Netanyahu condemned the world’s silence and compliance in the face of Iran’s virulent Jew-hatred.

“I want you to think about a regime that openly declared its intention to eliminate every black person, every gay person, every European. I think the entire world would be outraged, and rightly so. But when a regime merely calls to wipe out every Israeli – which is what they say day in day out, their most prominent leaders, they say it – what do we encounter? A deafening silence.”

Iran’s Jew-hatred “must encounter forceful consistent powerful resistance, in words and also in deeds” by every person in the world with a conscience, Netanyahu added. He vowed that as prime minister of Israel, he will not be silent. “I haven’t been silent, and we don’t intend to be inactive either.”

“We don’t merely intend to speak out but we will take all the measures we need to defend ourselves, and we will take all the measures necessary to prevent Iran from getting the means of mass murder to carry out their horrible plans. We cannot and will not be silent in the face of Iran’s stated aim of destroying Israel,” he declared.

Netanyahu further warned that Jew-hatred would eventually harm the world at large. “We also know that the issue is not merely the Jewish state or the Jewish people. Because we’ve seen that this hatred, when it goes unchecked, spreads around the world, and in fact, in many ways, that is what is happening. So it’s up to the forces of civilization, the forces of conscience, the forces of responsibility to join together to stop this process.”

“The regime that spawned the Holocaust ended up in the dustbin of history. That’s a lesson for Iran. It’s a lesson to every enemy of the Jewish people and the Jewish state,” Netanyahu asserted. “We will never forget the victims. We will never allow another Holocaust to take place.”

By: Max Gelber, United with Israel