(Prime Minister's Office) In a video address on Wednesday to an international conference in Vienna on combating anti-Semitism, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: The Holocaust did not begin, of course, in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. The Holocaust began with hateful words, burning books, shattering storefronts. The lesson of the Holocaust is that we must never forget the importance of fighting hate, barbarism and radicalism, and to do so early on when you can still stop bad things from getting worse. Today, we are experiencing a resurgence of anti-Semitism worldwide. We once again hear false and dehumanizing allegations against Jews. We see attempts to kill or harm Jews in the name of radical ideologies. And since the establishment of the State of Israel, we face a new form of anti-Semitism: vicious efforts to demonize the Jewish State and deny the Jewish people the right to self-determination in our ancestral homeland, the Land of Israel. When every nation is allowed to define its flag, its national anthem, its national identity, except for the Jewish people, this is anti-Semitism. The first step to combat anti-Semitism is to define it. The Israeli government, along with seven other European governments, including Austria, has adopted the IHRA [International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance] definition of anti-Semitism. I urge all countries to adopt this definition and to increase their efforts to combat anti-Semitism and its modern manifestation, anti-Zionism.
2018-11-22 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive