Netanyahu sounds alarm on antisemitism at Holocaust Remembrance Day gathering
Leaders from around the world gathered in Jerusalem on Tuesday to highlight the global surge in antisemitism on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, marked annually on the anniversary of the 1945 liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi extermination camp.
An opening gala was held on Monday, during which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that the West’s democratic civilization is under threat from a destructive ideology that has infiltrated every country in Western Europe and the United States.
"They want to destroy the West as we know it. And they agree on one thing. What is the thing that they agree on? World War Jew. To conduct a world war, first against the Jews and against the Jewish state," he said.
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"And for the radical Muslims, they are right, because there would be no West in the Middle East if the Jewish state is eradicated. There would be no obstacle for the further invasion of Europe if the Jewish state doesn't exist. And it also appeals to their internal hatred of the Jews, which has common roots with antisemitism over the centuries," Netanyahu added.
Among the prominent international figures attending the conference were Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama; former Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz; former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison; Hungarian Minister for European Union Affairs János Bóka and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee.
"Antisemitism is rooted in a spiritual disease of raw evil," Huckabee told Fox News Digital. "It’s the bigotry of believing oneself to be superior to another, which is the essence of all forms of irrational hate and racism. We all should be speaking up and standing up against it," he said.
"Hating the Jews today is hating Christians tomorrow and some other group the next. It’s a cancer that is never satisfied until every healthy human relationship is destroyed. It originates in hell. Any and all efforts to identify such darkness is helpful. Being quiet about it is to accept it and agree with it," the ambassador added.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog was the first speaker to address the conference on Tuesday, warning of a deteriorating reality for Jewish communities worldwide.
"The same old plague has been let loose on our society once again. The rationale may be different, but it is the same ancient poison, it has taken many forms, but it has always carried the same name, antisemitism," he said.
Herzog noted that Jews now feel compelled to hide their identities on the streets of London and Paris, and that Jewish worshipers must be protected on Saturday mornings from Toronto to Boston to Buenos Aires.
He cited the killing of Jewish worshipers in Manchester, England, on Yom Kippur, the murder of innocents at a Chanukah celebration in Sydney, Australia and the isolation and harassment of Jewish students on university campuses across the U.S. and Europe.
"When this happens," Herzog said, "we are failing to meet our vow. We are failing to meet our duties to humanity."
Herzog also addressed concerns in the United States, citing New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. "To deny the Jewish people and only the Jewish people the right to self-determination in their national homeland is antisemitism - even if you are the mayor of the city with the most Jews outside Israel," he said.
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The conference, titled Generation Truth and hosted by Israel’s Minister of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism, Amichai Chikli, focused on three primary manifestations of modern antisemitism: violent Islamist antisemitism, progressive antisemitism that seeks to delegitimize Israel and exclude Jews from public life, and far-right antisemitism, which has gained renewed visibility in recent years.
On Tuesday, Chikli drew a connection between Nazi ideology and what he described as "Islamo-Nazism," which he said underpins the worldview of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.
"Eighty-one years have passed, and the Jewish people have still not fully recovered from the horrific campaign of annihilation carried out by Nazi Germany. Eighty-one years have passed and yet an axe is still raised against us seeking to destroy the small Jewish state and to harm Jews at every point on the globe, from the kibbutzim and communities in southern Israel still scared by the barbaric Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7 to Manchester and Sydney," Chikli said.
"This conference seeks to banish political correctness… and to mobilize all essential forces in the ideological and physical fight against the modern heirs of the Nazi," he continued.
Also speaking at the conference was Sylvan Adams, president of the World Jewish Congress for the Israel region, who told Fox News Digital that on Oct. 8, 2023 — before the war in Gaza began and while Israel was still counting its dead — demonstrations took place across the globe celebrating the Hamas-led massacre.
He blamed the events on several countries that he said are part of an organized campaign led by Qatar, which he said serves as a frontline for the Muslim Brotherhood, with backing from Iran and, more recently, China —actors he argued exploit Israel and the Jewish people to intimidate and overturn Western society.
"After Israel appeared wounded and vulnerable on Oct. 7, they activated a massive, long-prepared campaign — investing vast resources, infiltrating institutions, and planting paid operatives in Western cities in an effort to deliver a final blow. But we see how deeply mistaken they were," Adams said.
"We need to push back and remind leaders in the West, institutional leaders as well as political leaders, that we are under attack. Our way of life, our freedoms are under attack. It’s not Israel’s fight, this is a clash of civilizations, we are fighting for all of the West," he added.