UN chief vows to stand up against anti-Israel bias – Netanyahu issues Holocaust Day warning

This news has been read 4619 times!

JERUSALEM, April 24, (Agencies): Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday threatened to destroy those who call for the destruction of Israel, in a speech to mark the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day. “Iran and the Islamic state want to destroy us, and a hatred for Jews is being directed towards the Jewish state today,” he said at a ceremony in Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem memorial. “Those who threaten to destroy us risk being destroyed themselves,” Netanyahu warned.

“From being defenceless people, we have become a state with a defensive capacity that is among the strongest in the world,” he said. Six Holocaust survivors lit torches in memory of the six million Jews killed by the Nazis during the 1939- 1945 World War II. Israel will also come to a standstill for two minutes at 10 am local time (0700 GMT) on Thursday as sirens wail in remembrance of the Jewish victims of Nazism.

Genocide

Radio stations and television channels on Sunday were broadcasting programmes about the genocide. More than 213,000 Holocaust survivors live in Israel today, many of them below the poverty line, according to survivors’ groups. Israel came to a standstill on Monday as people stopped in their tracks for a two-minute siren that wailed across the country in remembrance of the Holocaust’s 6 million Jewish victims. The ritual is the centerpiece of Israel’s annual Holocaust Remembrance Day for those who were systematically killed by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II.

Pedestrians stood in place, buses stopped on busy streets and cars pulled over on major highways — their drivers standing on the roads with their heads bowed. In homes and businesses, people stopped what they were doing to pay homage to the victims of the Nazi genocide, in which a third of world Jewry was annihilated. A wreath laying ceremony at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial followed, with Israeli leaders and Holocaust survivors in attendance. A public reading of names also took place in Israel’s parliament, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other leaders recited names of relatives who were killed. Other ceremonies, prayers and musical performances took place in schools, community centers and army bases around the country.

The annual remembrance is one of the most solemn days on Israel’s calendar. Restaurants, cafes and places of entertainment shut down, and radio and TV programs are dedicated almost exclusively to documentaries about the Holocaust, interviews with survivors and somber music. The Israeli flag flew at half-staff. Israel was established in 1948, just three years after the end of the war, and hundreds of thousands of survivors fled there. Some 160,000 elderly survivors remain, with a similar number worldwide. With the passing years, and the dwindling in numbers of survivors, greater emphasis has been put on commemorating their individual stories.

The central theme of this year’s commemorations at Yad Vashem is “Restoring Their Identities: The Fate of the Individual During the Holocaust.” The Holocaust memorial called on the public to share testimony and provide more names of those who perished. To date, Yad Vashem’s Shoah Victims’ Names Project has collected over 4,700,000 names of the victims. “It is a race against the clock to collect as many names of those murdered during the Holocaust before there are no more survivors left,” said Alexander Avram, the director of Vad Vashem’s Hall of Names.

Indifference

At the opening ceremony on Sunday night, Netanyahu spoke about what he said was the world’s indifference to the genocide of the Jews in World War II and how Israel is the guarantee the Jewish people will never be that weak again.

❑ ❑ ❑

In New York, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres sought to reassure international Jewish community leaders on Sunday that he would stand up against any perceptions of anti-Israel bias at the world organization. Guterres spoke amid a deepening row over alleged bias within the UN following US pressure, exacerbated last month when a UN rights expert issued a blistering criticism of Israel’s policies. Guterres said he would “guarantee” that those working under him would abide by principles that he considers right.

“As secretary general of the United Nations I consider that the state of Israel needs to be treated as any other state,” he said to applause at the World Jewish Congress in New York. “I have already had the opportunity to show that I’m ready to abide by that principle even when that forces me to take some decisions that create some uncomfortable situations,” he added. Former UN official and Jordanian national Rima Khalaf last month said Guterres asked her to withdraw a report in which she accused Israel of being an “apartheid state” and subsequently resigned.

Qualified

The UN chief nonetheless qualified: “That does not mean that I will always be in agreement with all the decisions that are taken at any moment by any government that exists in Israel.”

❑ ❑ ❑

Prosecutors charged an Israeli- American teenager on Monday with making more than 2,000 threats against Jewish institutions, airlines, police stations and even a professional basketball team’s plane, Israel’s justice ministry said. The charges follow a wave of bomb threats to Jewish institutions in the United States that helped spread fears over whether anti-Semitism was rising in the country. A justice ministry statement said that the 18-year-old from the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon was also charged with extortion, money laundering, assaulting a police officer, drug trafficking and possessing paedophile pornography.

Among the threats he is accused of making was one against a plane flying the Boston Celtics US basketball team to a game and another against Delaware state senator Ernesto Lopez. He is also suspected of making a hoax bomb call to Delta Airlines in February 2015 which led to an emergency landing, and another against an Israeli El Al flight over Switzerland. The statement said Swiss and French warplanes were scrambled to escort the El Al plane and to shoot it down if it became evident that it would crash on Swiss soil.

This news has been read 4619 times!