In Holocaust Day comments, Rivlin invokes Palestinian victims in Yarmouk
At closing Remembrance Day ceremony, president says Israel must not turn a blind eye to humanity’s horrors
Wrapping up Holocaust Remembrance Day events on Thursday evening, President Reuven Rivlin invoked the crimes of Boko Haram, and the recent Islamic State attack on a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, in an appeal to Israel to not turn a blind eye to unfolding global atrocities.
Meanwhile, Zionist Union chairman Isaac Herzog said Israel should not speak of itself as mired in existential crisis on Holocaust Remembrance Day, in a jab at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech the night before, in which he said he would not allow modern Israel to be “a passing phase.”
“The State of Israel and the Jewish people must strive to stand at the forefront of humanity’s fight against humanity’s own excesses… We will not turn a blind eye to the slaughter in Yarmouk or the actions of Boko Haram in Nigeria,” Rivlin said during a ceremony in Kibbutz Yad Mordechai. “We must work together with the family of nations, to do everything we can to prevent the decline of humanity to the depths of hatred into which our brothers and sisters were cast.”
The president was referencing recent actions by the Islamic State and the Assad regime in the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, in which many of the 18,000 residents have been killed, and mass murders of innocents by the Islamist group Boko Haram in Nigeria.
“We must come forth against those who shed their humanity and commit genocides, wherever they may be,” Rivlin added. “The question that should torment us all today is whether we would act like the heroes, the Righteous Among the Nations, or would we stand idly by? Would we be willing to save a single soul, or an entire family?”
Herzog, speaking at a different event, criticized the prime minister for ostensibly casting doubt on Israel’s future during his address on Wednesday night.
Netanyahu on Wednesday had likened Iran to the Nazis, and said the world had not learned the lessons of the Holocaust, as evidenced by an emerging nuclear deal.
“We will not allow the State of Israel to become a passing phase in the history of our people,” Netanyahu vowed.
In response, Herzog said: “To our enemies, I say tonight — don’t test us. With that, I believe that we cannot let our rhetoric on Holocaust Remembrance Day deal with existential fears. We cannot hear concerns that we will be a ‘passing phase.'”
Herzog, whose Zionist Union lost to Netanyahu’s Likud in the March 17 election, said the Jews have built a “strong homeland” in Israel, and that “[we must] believe in it, and not let the endless fear trickle in.”
