Our eyes are imprinted with the image of the death march of 3,200 Jews from the Bor camp in Serbia. The roads splattered with blood, and strewn with dead bodies, with torn prayer shawls, and with unanswered prayers.
Before our weeping eyes still stand the rows of Jews in the Majdanek camp who were driven out of the barracks in the early morning, and were shot dead into pits while the loudspeakers still played dance music.
Our ears ring with the terrifying roar of the deportation trains carrying our mothers and fathers, our grandfathers and grandmothers to Treblinka.
We see the children who never had a childhood.
We see them all before us. The babies’ first gurgle of laughter, and the parents’ last tears.
The Nazis turned antisemitism into an extermination industry. They decreed that they were the super race: “Deutschland Über Alles”, and that other peoples were “untermenschen” – subhuman.
70 years ago, in May 1941, the Germans started to assemble the killing units, and one month later, those units embarked on a course of systematic mass murder in the territories of the Soviet Union that spread out in all directions, assisted by collaborators in the different countries.
We remember Babi Yar, Ponar, Bogdanovka, Jasenovac, Rumbula, as well as hundreds of other killing sites.
We were alone, without our own country. The Allied bombers that flew over Auschwitz- Birkenau did not drop as much as one bomb on the installations of mass murder there.
The Shoah proved once and for all that there is no substitute for our own homeland, and that there is no substitute for the Israel Defense Forces.
Today, our own homeland is established. Today we have an outstanding army that the world has learned to respect. We have a democracy that knows how to defend itself and which yearns for peace.
This is our answer to the enemy. To all our enemies.
Even now, after the Shoah, there is still a regime whose leaders flagrantly deny the Holocaust and openly incite genocide. This should shock and horrify all people.
The fanatical leadership of Iran is a danger to the entire world. It poses a threat not only to Israel, but to every human being, everywhere; a true danger to the fate of mankind.
The international community has announced that it will not countenance nuclear arms in Iran’s hands. Now this commitment will be put to the test.
Distinguished guests,
We, the Jewish people have been the victims of racism, persecution and discrimination, but we never neglected the commandment to respect every human being, as every person, according to our tradition, is created in G-d’s image.
Discrimination did not blind us. Even in a dark world, we aspired and will continue to aspire to be a “light unto the nations”, for that is the meaning of a Jewish state: to physically defend our people, and morally safeguard our heritage.
Every Israeli citizen, regardless of religion or race, knows that Israel is, was, and is committed to being the most anti-racist country in the world.
Israel is the historic memorial for the victims of the Holocaust, and the concrete realization of their dreams.
The dreams of 1.5 million children who were murdered before they had experienced life.
The children born here, free and standing tall, are the realization of the shattered dream of mothers murdered with their children in their arms.
The classroom in the Israeli school is the realization of the dream of Janusz Korczak, who accompanied his pupils to Treblinka.
The local neighborhood in Israel is the realization of the dream of those who were taken to the town squares in the dead of night, never to return home.
The regular Knesset session is the realization of the dream of millions of Jews who were downtrodden, robbed of their citizenship and eventually murdered.
Israel is nothing short of miraculous, because the Holocaust survivors who returned from hell became the builders of redemption.
Citizens of Israel,
Tomorrow, Israel will wake up to a new day. Buses will travel, men and women will go out to work. Our soldiers will report for duty, and children will go to school.
The memory will be safeguarded. Construction will increase and our defenses will become stronger, and with them our wonderful capacity to hope. To create even when we are in pain. To look forward to spring on cold, wet days. To innocently believe that a better world awaits us, our neighbors, and every human being.
“The Strength of Israel will not lie”, and man will triumph.
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