PM Netanyahu’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day Address at Yad Vashem
(Communicated by the Prime Minister’s Media Adviser)

Following is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address on the occasion of
International Holocaust Remembrance Day, today (Tuesday, 27 January 2015),
at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem:

“My responsibility as Prime Minister of Israel is to ensure that the State
of Israel will never again be threatened with destruction. My responsibility
is to see to it that there will not be a reason to build additional memorial
sites such as Yad Vashem.

The pending agreement with Iran is an agreement that endangers the State of
Israel. It leaves Iran with the capabilities that will allow it to arm
itself with nuclear weapons, one bomb at first and afterwards many atomic
bombs. We cannot live with such an agreement; therefore, we oppose it. Even
those who try to challenge us within our borders will discover that we are
ready to respond with force. Israel views with utmost gravity the attack
against it from Syrian territory. Those who play with fire will get burned.

Preserving the memory of the Holocaust is more important today than ever
before.

We live in an age of resurgent and violent anti-Semitism, and commemorations
like this ceremony remind us where humanity's oldest and most enduring
hatred can lead.

Many thought that after the horrors of the Holocaust, anti-Semitism would
finally contract and disappear.

That has not happened.

Hatred of the Jews appeared to take a brief respite after World War II for a
few decades.

It has now returned in full force.

Once again in Europe and elsewhere, Jews are being slandered, vilified and
targeted just for being Jews.

This is taking place in the intolerant Middle East and in the very heart of
the liberal and tolerant West.

It's taking place in Tehran and Paris, in Gaza and Brussels. Around the
world, Jewish communities are increasingly living in fear.

But it’s not just the Jewish people that is being slandered, vilified and
targeted. It’s the Jewish state as well.

Israel is assaulted with the same slurs and libels that have been leveled at
the Jews since time immemorial.

Islamist extremists have incorporated the most outrageous anti-Semitic
calumnies into their murderous doctrine.

Take the Hamas Charter as one example of many.

It reads like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the anti-Semitic forgery
on which it is based. It calls for the murder of Jews and the destruction of
their state.

Just as classic anti-Semites portrayed the Jew as the embodiment of all evil
in the world, today's anti-Semites portray the Jewish state in the same
twisted manner.

And what do the so-called ‘enlightened’ organs of the international
community do in response?

A quarter of a million people are slaughtered in Syria, poison gas is used
against civilians, and who do the signatories to the Geneva Convention
urgently meet to discuss? Israel.

Across the region, dictatorial regimes and brutal movements brutalize their
peoples – suppressing women, lynching gays, forcing Christians to live in
fear.

And who does the Human Rights Council of the United Nations condemn? Israel.

Hamas fires thousands of rockets at our civilians, deliberately targeting
our people while hiding behind Palestinian civilians it uses as human
shields.

And who does the ICC announce it will examine? Israel.

No rational examination of the facts could justify this assault on Israel,
the Middle East’s only democracy, the most beleaguered democracy on earth.

This obsession with the Jewish people and their state has a name. It's
called anti-Semitism.

Some things just don't change.

But I can tell you today what has changed.

We have changed.

The Jews have changed.

We are no longer a stateless people endlessly searching for a safe haven.

We are no longer a powerless people begging others to protect us.

Today we are an independent and sovereign people in our ancestral homeland.

Today we can speak out against the hateful voices of those seeking our
destruction.

Today we can protect ourselves and defend our freedom.

Ladies and gentlemen,

The ayatollahs in Iran, they deny the Holocaust while planning another
genocide against our people.

Let me be clear.

The Jewish people will defend itself by itself against any threat.

That's what the Jewish state is all about.

Nonetheless, we appreciate the support of our friends around the world who
reject the spreading twin diseases of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.
They're one in the same.

We are especially grateful for the bipartisan support for Israel across the
United States, our great ally.

We share a special bond with the United States, which is built on common
values and it's reflected in our expansive cooperation, especially on
matters of security.

Yet it is the Government of Israel that holds the ultimate responsibility
for the security of the one and only Jewish state.

And here we must speak out and must speak our mind about the dangers to our
people and our state. This is something we could not do at the time of the
Holocaust.

Israel will reject any agreement that leaves Iran as a nuclear threshold
state.

Regrettably, our understanding is that the offer made by the P5+1 does
exactly that.

It would enable Iran to breakout to a nuclear weapon within a few months and
many more bombs within a short time.

The capabilities of Iran to produce enriched uranium for atomic bombs are
left intact.

Such an agreement is sure to spark a nuclear arms race in the region that
would turn the Middle East into a nuclear tinderbox.

And such an agreement is simply unacceptable to Israel. We will oppose it
and we will oppose it vigorously.

On this day of Holocaust remembrance, I pledge to you what we could neither
say nor do 70 years ago.

Israel will always do what needs to be done to ensure the security of the
Jewish people and the one and only Jewish state. That is the significance of
this day.

Thank you.”