JERUSALEM – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday rejected international pressure to stop the war in Gaza in a fiery speech marking the country’s annual Holocaust Memorial Day, declaring: “If Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will remain alone.”
The message, delivered in an environment that normally avoids politics, addressed a growing chorus of world leaders who have criticized the heavy cost caused by Israel’s military offensive against Hamas militants and urged the parties to agree to a ceasefire.
Netanyahu has said he is open to a deal that would halt nearly seven months of fighting and bring home hostages held by Hamas. But he also says he remains committed to an invasion of the southern Gaza city of Rafah, despite widespread international opposition due to the more than 1 million civilians crammed there.
“I say to the leaders of the world: no pressure, no decision from any international forum will stop Israel from defending itself,” he said, speaking in English. “Never again now.”
Yom Hashoah, the day that Israel celebrates as a memorial to the 6 million Jews killed by Nazi Germany and its allies in the Holocaust, is one of the most solemn dates on the country’s calendar. Speeches at the ceremony generally avoid politics, although Netanyahu has used the occasion in recent years to attack Israel’s archenemy, Iran.
The ceremony marked the beginning of Israel’s first Holocaust Memorial Day since the October 7 Hamas attack that sparked the war, imbuing the already somber day with additional significance.
Hamas militants killed around 1,200 people in the attack, making it the deadliest violence against Jews since the Holocaust.
Israel responded with an air and ground offensive in Gaza, where the death toll has risen to more than 34,500 people, according to local health officials, and about 80% of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents are displaced. The death and destruction prompted South Africa to file a genocide case against Israel at the UN world court. Israel vehemently rejects the accusations.
On Sunday, Netanyahu attacked those who accused Israel of carrying out genocide against Palestinians, claiming that Israel was doing everything possible to guarantee the entry of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip.
The 24-hour memorial period began after sundown Sunday with a ceremony at Yad Vashem, Israel’s national Holocaust memorial, in Jerusalem.
There are approximately 245,000 living Holocaust survivors worldwide, according to the Claims Conference, an organization that negotiates material compensation for Holocaust survivors. Approximately half of survivors live in Israel.
On Sunday, Tel Aviv University and the Anti-Defamation League released an Annual World Report on Antisemitism for 2023, which found a sharp increase in antisemitic attacks around the world.
It stated that the number of anti-Semitic incidents in the United States has doubled, from 3,697 in 2022 to 7,523 in 2023.
Although most of these incidents occurred after the outbreak of war in October, the number of anti-Semitic incidents, which include vandalism, harassment, assault and bomb threats, from January to September was already significantly higher than the previous year.
The report found an average of three bomb threats per day at synagogues and Jewish institutions in the US, more than 10 times the number in 2022.
Other countries have seen similar increases in anti-Semitic incidents. In France, the number almost quadrupled, from 436 in 2022 to 1,676 in 2023, while it more than doubled in the United Kingdom and Canada.
“Following the October 7 war crimes committed by Hamas, the world saw the worst wave of anti-Semitic incidents since the end of World War II,” the report states.
Netanyahu also compared the recent wave of protests on American campuses to German universities in the 1930s, in the run-up to the Holocaust. He condemned the “explosion of a volcano of anti-Semitism that has spewed boiling lava of lies against us around the world.”
Nearly 2,500 students were arrested in a wave of protests on US college campuses, while there were smaller protests in other countries, including France. Protesters reject accusations of anti-Semitism and say they are criticizing Israel. Campuses and the federal government are struggling to define exactly where political speech veers into anti-Semitism.
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