Israel: Netanyahu's Speech on Evil at Auschwitz

Last Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared, in front of the Auschwitz extermination camp ,that the world must learn from the Holocaust to unite against new threats. His reference to "impending danger" and an "existential threat", as well as "murderous evil [which] must be stopped as soon as possible, before it can realize its schemes", was of course aimed at the "nuclear threat" of Iran.

To prevent this "evil", Netanyahu emphasized the need of a strong state and a powerful army and added:

We must warn of the impending danger to the rest of the world and at the same time to be ready to defend ourselves.

We the Jewish people learned the lesson [of the Holocaust] well after we lost one-third of our people.

I pledge as prime minister that we will never let the hand of evil harm our people and our state, never again.

All enlightened nations must absorb this lesson.

At the end of his speech, Netanyahu set out the "holy" defense line and said that he would not to allow a "new Amalek", a reference to a Biblical king who waged war against the Jews,  to threaten again to destroy the Jewish nation.

Comments

[Adam]

I fail to understand your objection. Of course the current Iranian regime would pose an existential threat to Israel if it is allowed to develop nuclear weapons. And possibly other nations in the region as well. Do you even deny that?

[Yonatan Amir]

Amalek were a people and it is a generic name for an evil person or persons seeking harm upon the Jewish people. The Talmud states that some of Haman's (Amalek) offspring taught Torah in Bnei-Brak, i.e. they converted and became Jewish scholars - signaling we are not all that different, and good can come of them.

[Scott Lucas]

Yonatan,

Thank you for the clarification.

S.