“Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn. Lift up your eyes and look about you: All assemble and come to you. The children of your oppressors will come bowing before you; all who despise you will bow down at your feet and will call you the City of the Lord, Zion of the Holy One of Israel. . . .Although you have been forsaken and hated, with no one traveling through, I will make you the everlasting pride . . . and the joy of all generations.”
Forty-six world leaders arrived in Israel for the World Holocaust Forum. The Fifth World Holocaust Forum, entitled “Remembering the Holocaust: Fighting AntiSemitism,” took place today at Israel’s Holocaust museum and memorial, Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.
The leaders included numerous heads of state and government, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Emmanuel Macron, US Vice President Mike Pence and British Prince Charles. [Pictured: German Chancellor Merkel in Jerusalem]
Israeli PM Netanyahu said in a video posted on social media: “I welcome the leaders from around the world who are coming here, to Jerusalem, to mark with us 75 years since the liberation of the Auschwitz extermination camp. It is important that they remember where we came from, and it is important that they see what we have achieved.”
This historic event takes place as hateful and violent expressions of antiSemitism around the world are on the rise. A spokesman for the Yad Vashem Institution stated that “efforts to educate about the dangers of antiSemitism, racism, and xenophobia, and foster Holocaust commemoration, education, and research have made this event more crucial and relevant than ever.” Israeli President Reuven Rivlin also said that the event must concentrate on “what steps we must take to ensure the safety and security of Jews all around the world.”
However, AntiSemitism, Even in Israel Remains a Fact of Life
Israel was not happy, with the news that Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prince Charles used this visit to also meet with the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, finding it shameful, intolerable and disrespectful for them to do so during an event intended to commemorate the Holocaust. Abbas believes that the Holocaust either did not happen or was wildly exaggerated. Abbas wrote, “The number of Jewish victims is supposed to be six million. But it was likely much smaller, perhaps less than a million.”
Regarding the gas chambers, Abbas accepts as fact the claims of Faurisson, who is one of the world’s most famous venomous Holocaust deniers, that they were not intended to kill Jews but, “they were intended only for the cremation of corpses due to the fear of spreading disease in the surrounding areas.”
Faurisson was eventually prosecuted and convicted for racist incitement. Yet Abbas uses the same incitement with his people.
Abbas has continued to make vicious anti-Semitic statements about the Holocaust up to the present day. He gives what he calls “history lessons” in which he blames the Jews for causing the Holocaust because of their “social behavior, and financial matters.”
The world leaders’ desire to meet with Abbas during a Holocaust memorial ceremony at this time is totally disrespectful to the victims and holocaust survivors as well as to the state of Israel.
The official Palestinian Authority Daily published an opinion piece on Saturday that called for a terrorist attack on this major memorial ceremony in Israel marking 75 years since the liberation of Auschwitz, saying, “One shot will disrupt the ceremony and one dead body will cancel the ceremony.”
Palestinian columnist Yahya Rabah wrote in PA Daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida that Israel was “now energetically planning to hold a ceremony for the Holocaust in occupied Jerusalem.” Rabah came against the international leaders for recognizing that the “Jews’ Holocaust is terrible” while accepting as “insignificant, beautiful, spectacular” what he called the “Palestinian holocaust by Israel that still continues.” Rabah warned that the Palestinians would surely “resist the ceremony being held in Jerusalem itself, as Jerusalem is theirs, despite Trump, who gave it to Israel as part of the ‘filthy deal of the century’.” His suggested solution to stop the international ceremony from taking place was to use violence and terror.
Abbas warned Israel and the U.S. not to cross “red lines,” saying that the Palestinian government will continue to “refuse and resist any American claims of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital.”
“The Palestinian position supports ending the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories whose capital is East Jerusalem,” said an official statement from the Palestinian President. “If the U.S. publishes the ‘Deal of the Century’, the authority will take steps to protect its basic rights.”
“It is obvious to us that the presentation of the peace deal is meant to help Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with his elections, we know when personal interests are at play,” said the senior official.
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