'Had we not acted …': Netanyahu hails 'crushing blow to Iran' as Israel marks Holocaust

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday said that while Jews were like an “abused animal crying in agony” at the hands of the Nazis, the modern state of Israel fights back against its enemies.While addressing Israel’s annual Holocaust Memorial Day, Netanyahu listed Iranian nuclear sites alongside Nazi death camps and said there would be no second Holocaust.“We promised there would be no second Holocaust, and this year, we fulfilled that promise in practice,” Netanyahu said.“Had we not acted, the names Natanz, Fordow, Isfahan and Parchin might have been remembered eternally in infamy, just like Auschwitz, Treblinka, Majdanek, and Sobibor,” he said.He also highlighted Israel’s military actions against Iran and its regional network, saying the country is acting decisively to neutralise existential threats and ensure its survival.Netanyahu also warned that Europe is “losing control of its identity, its values, and its responsibility to defend civilisation.”He described Europe as suffering from “deep moral weakness,” adding that Israel today is defending not only itself, but a Europe that has “forgotten so much since the Holocaust.”

Meanwhile, President Isaac Herzog said that “empty words” are an insufficient response to the global surge in antisemitism, he urged international leaders to confront hatred “before it is too late.”Turning his attention to the domestic front, Herzog framed the current conflict as a test of national character.“We are one family, with a shared destiny,” Herzog said. “A family may argue, but it must never tear itself apart.”He expressed a firm conviction that while the campaign is prolonged, Israel would ultimately emerge “strengthened and empowered.”The theme for this year’s observance, “The Jewish Family During the Holocaust,” highlighted the systematic attempt to dismantle the Jewish domestic unit and the subsequent continuity of the generations that followed.Despite constraints imposed by the security situation, Israel maintained the solemnity and universal message of Holocaust Remembrance Day, reaffirming its enduring commitment: to remember, to defend life, and to ensure that such atrocities never happen again.