JERUSALEM (AP) — Israelis have stopped in their tracks, standing in silence as sirens pierced the air to remember the 6 million Jews who perished in the Nazi Holocaust during World War II.
The Jewish state came to a virtual stop as the two-minute siren went off on Monday morning, marking Israel’s Holocaust remembrance day — one of the most solemn days on the Israeli calendar.
Buses and cars stopped on roads and highways. Many people stepped out of their vehicles and stood in solemn silence. Pedestrians stopped walking and stood still in contemplation.
From The Jerusalem Post, Sam Sokol reporting, we learn:
President Shimon Peres warned of the dangers of Europe’s extreme Right, during a state ceremony marking the beginning of Holocaust Remembrance Day in Jerusalem yesterday.
Addressing a crowd of thousands at Yad Vashem, Peres marked the 70th anniversary of the destruction of Hungarian Jewry and noted that anti-Semitism is again on the rise in the former Soviet republic.
“The president of Hungary will take part tomorrow in the March of the Living in Poland, a gesture deserving of admiration,” Peres said. “However, we must not ignore any occurrence of anti-Semitism, any desecration of a synagogue, any tombstone smashed in a cemetery in which our families are buried.
“We must not ignore the rise of extreme right-wing parties with neo-Nazi tendencies, which are a danger to each of us and a threat to every nation.”
Peres was specifically referring to the fringe Jobbik party’s rise to become Hungary’s third-largest parliamentary faction.
Termed a neo-Nazi party by the World Jewish Congress and the Federation of Hungarian Jewish Communities (Mazsihisz), Jobbik won 20 percent of the seats in the Hungarian legislature during elections earlier this month.
President Peres is, sadly, correct: Anti-Semitism is, indeed, on the rise again in Hungary and in Putin’s Fascist Russia. In fact, it is on the rise throughout Europe.
But — and I want to put this as gently as possible because he experienced the Holocaust first hand — Shimon Peres gets it horribly wrong, doing a disservice to the Truth.
He is a good man who is denial that it was fellow Leftists — the Nazis — who murdered over six million of the Chosen People Of God.
In his remarks, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said [courtesy of The Times Of Israel]:
Very few world leaders understood the enormity of the threat to humanity posed by Nazism. Churchill was one of them. Few among our leaders, primarily Jabotinsky, warned against the imminent destruction facing our nation, but they were widely criticized and their warnings were disregarded, and they were treated as merchants of doom and war mongers.
So I ask: How is it possible that so many people failed to understand the reality? The bitter and tragic truth is this: it is not that they did not see it. They did not want to see it. And why did they choose not to see the truth? Because they did not want to face the consequences of that truth.
During the 1930′s, when the Nazis were gaining momentum, the influence of the trauma of the First World War was still fresh. Twenty years earlier, the people of the West experienced a terrible trench war, a war which claimed the lives of 16 million people. Therefore, the leaders of the West operated on the basis of one axiom: avoid another confrontation at any cost, and thus they laid the foundation for the most terrible war in human history. This axiom of avoiding conflict at any cost, this axiom was adopted not only by the leaders. The people themselves, primarily the educated ones, shared it too.
In 1933, for example, the year Hitler rose to power, there was a meeting of the Oxford University student organization – an institute from which generations of British leaders had emerged. Following a heated debate, the students voted for a resolution stating that they “would under no circumstances fight for their King and Country”. This resolution passed by an overwhelming majority only ten days after Hitler entered the Chancellery of Germany.
And believe me: that message reverberated in Berlin.
This example illustrates the West’s feeble attitude vis-à-vis the rise of Nazism.
Month after month, year after year, more and more information was received in London, Paris and Washington regarding the capabilities and intentions of the Nazi regime. The picture was becoming clear to everybody. However, “they have eyes, but cannot see; they have ears, but cannot hear.”
When you refuse to accept reality as it is, you can deny it. And this is precisely what the leaders of the West did. They dismissed the murderous Nazi rhetoric as internal German politics; they downplayed the seriousness of the danger of the military build-up of the Nazis, claiming that it was the result of the natural will of a proud nation, that it should be taken into consideration, that it should be accepted.
The reality was clear, but it was cloaked in a bubble of illusions. This bubble was burst by the stealth attack by the Nazis on Europe. And the price of the illusion and desire was very heavy because by the time the leaders of the West finally acted, their people paid a terrible price. World War II claimed the lives not of 16 million people, the unimaginable number of victims during World War I, but of 60 million, including one third of our people, who were butchered by the Nazi beast.
Citizens of Israel, my brothers and sisters,
Has the world learned from the mistakes of the past? Today, we are again facing clear facts and a tangible threat.
The Answer: No.
The Prime Minister [and Leader Of The Free World] cites Iran as being like the Nazis, but let us not forget Fascist Russia and Red China and every Muslim regime — across the world are like the National Socialists.
Evil men are plotting the destruction of The West, which includes the Jews. These men consider the Jews as easy targets because they know so many non-Jews in The West are susceptible to that now-ancient irrational and vile hatred of the small, easy target: the Chosen People. They know that a man in his misery will often not dare to look inside his Soul to see the causes of his lowered state, but will take the cowardly way out and lash out at a vulnerable group — and that group is so often the Jews.
The Christians in Muslim countries — at least, those left living — are well aware of this habit of Mankind. The nations of The West have been turning a blind eye to their situation in a vile replay of what happened to the Jews in the mid-20th Century and these same nations are, at the same time, embracing those who would joyfully initiate another Holocaust against the Jews, if they could, by their appeasement of Islam.
This is, of course, not surprising when you consider the fact that most of the nations of The West are being run by Leftists, and their citizens have been infected with Leftist Thinking.
It is natural for the Left to despise the Jews because they are an independent people who refuse to give-up what makes them who they are and the Left wants to destroy individuality in the name of bringing about Utopia.
The Freedom-loving peoples of the World must be willing to fight these servants of darkness and misery or we will all be burnt offerings on the blood-drenched altar of Totalitarianism.
This is why the Jewish vow ‘Never Again’ must be taken-up by all of us who hold Freedom and Liberty as sacred.
N E V E R A G A I N
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