Benjamin Netanyahu's keynote speech at "Ambassadors of" Truth"

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's keynote speech at "Ambassadors of" Truth"—the International Conference on Combating Antisemitism:"Minister Chikli,‏Thank you for hosting this conference. And all of you distinguished guests who have come here.I want to start with two words: Thank you.

Thank you for coming to Jerusalem. Thank you for standing with Israel. Thank you for standing with the Jewish people. Thank you for standing with the forces of civilization against the forces of barbarism.‏I say barbarism because antisemitism is a disease carried by barbarians that threatens all civilized societies.After the Holocaust, it was often said that few, if any, foresaw its horrors. This is patently not true. ‏Herzl saw it at the turn of the 20th century. He wrote more than 30 times about the impending destruction of European Jewry.He wrote, and I quote, 'The stone is rolling down the mountain slope to the bottom. The absolute bottom. Will there be devastation? Will there be confiscation? Will they expel us? Will they murder us? I anticipate all these things and more.'‏Jabotinsky, a student of Herzl, saw this clearly. In 1938, he stood in Warsaw and issued a final desperate call to his fellow Jews; he said, You are blind; you do not see.

But those who do see, save yourselves. Leave now.Another person who saw it was my father, the late Professor Benzion Netanyahu. He issued his own prescient warning five years earlier in 1933 with the rise of Hitler.‏He was 23 years old, and he wrote what appears in hindsight to be an astonishing prophecy. I quote: 'Racial antisemitism is inciting a global war against the existence of the Jews as a race that 'poisons' human societies. If racial antisemitism spreads, it will not only endanger Jewish rights but also the existence of Jewish people everywhere. In the face of the Holocaust facing the Jewish people..'. — The Holocaust, my father wrote, is ...our role is to repeatedly remind the entire world what Germany is inculcating to its own sons. We can only crush racial antisemitism if we prove that German racism is not directed at Jews alone. We must convince others that Hitler's attacks on the Jews of Germany are an attack on human society as a whole.'‏Perhaps the history of the 20th century and the fate of multitudes, including six million Jews, would have been different if more had paid heed to such warnings at the time.‏
Today we issue a similar warning. The fate of free societies is tied to their willingness to fight the scourge of antisemitism. For antisemitism legitimizes and unleashes wanton violence against a part of human society just because of the identity of its members.

Not because of anything they do, but because of who they are. And once this principle is practiced on one group, it has no limits. ‏Eighty years ago, this deadly virus destroyed a third of the Jewish people. Its virulent mutations under the Nazis claimed the lives of millions more until it was stamped out by unrelenting Allied military force.Now this hatred has re-emerged. It has re-emerged through its radical Islamist carriers in Yemen, Iran, Lebanon, Gaza, and elsewhere.These antisemites wish to destroy not only the Jewish state.
They seek to destroy the forces of modernity, and in the Arab and Muslim world, they seek to drag it back to a primitive and violent medievalism. ‏Nowhere was this fanaticism better demonstrated than on October 7th. The Hamas monsters who attacked us on that day beheaded our men, raped our women, and burnt our babies. They took 251 innocent people hostage, including grandmothers and their grandchildren. ‏We brought back 196 of these hostages, 147 of them alive. We are determined to bring all of them home.But here's what we learned that day, for those who needed to learn it. We learned that if they could, these savage Hamas killers would murder all of us, down to the last man, woman, and child. ‏This hatred, as Chancellor Scholz of Germany told me, he said, they're not different from the Nazis. They're exactly the same as the Nazis. That is true. But today the Jewish people are in a different position from where we were on the eve of the Holocaust.‏The Holocaust comprised 5,000 October 7s. The scattered Jewish people were totally powerless to resist it. This is not the case today. Today we have a state. Today we have an army. Today we can defend ourselves. And today we do defend ourselves. Our brave soldiers, our incredibly brave soldiers, rolled back the terrorist tide. They boldly fight against our would-be destroyers. For 18 months they have fought like lions on seven fronts. On October 7th we were surprised. We had a terrible, terrible massacre. And many believed that Israel was on the verge of extinction. ‏Nasrallah put it very clearly. He said the Jewish state and the Jewish army are no more than a spider's web, and it could easily be swept aside. ‏Well, a year and a half later, Nasrallah is gone, Haniyeh is gone, Sinwar is gone, Deif is gone, and Assad is gone.We have battered Hamas. We have brought Hezbollah to its knees. We destroyed the remnants of Syria's army. We hit the Houthis with the great help of our American allies. And we exposed Iran's vulnerability.We have changed; we are changing the face of the Middle East. We are giving it a new future.‏Yet as we win the war against the forces of antisemitism in the Middle East, the fires of antisemitism rage in the heart of Western civilization. They rage in Europe's capitals, in the Western press, and in social media. They rage in America's elite universities. I went to one of them. I can't believe that in Boston, in Cambridge, at MIT, where I went to school, and nearby Harvard, in Columbia in New York, and elsewhere, people are demonstrating with passion, these ignorant demonstrators. Who are they demonstrating for? For these murderers, these rapists, these mass killers.‏This is a reflection of a deep rot that has pervaded the intellectual hub of free societies. And this vilification of Israel, the Jewish people, and Western values has been propagated by a systemic alliance between the ultraprogressive Left and radical Islam. It must be resolutely fought by civilized societies to safeguard their future.‏This is why we must all commend President Trump's decisive actions against antisemitism, and we must pressure other governments to do the same.‏I know that you share this resolve to fight antisemitism. That's why you're here. That's why I salute your coming here to Jerusalem to express your refusal to cower before antisemitism.‏You have come from many lands. I welcome all those from across the political spectrum, be they from the Left or from the Right, who realize that antisemitism is intrinsically evil and that it threatens their own future. I salute you for coming to Jerusalem. ‏As for the Jewish people, many wonder why antisemitism has persisted from the Middle Ages down to modern times. The answer to this is complex, but it has two powerful and prominent elements.Throughout the course of their wanderings, the Jewish people suffered from a deadly duality. They were prominent, but they were also weak. This deadly duality invited envy and aggression with horrendous consequences down the ages.The nations of the world have long been habituated to regarding the Jew as a helpless victim, totally powerless before plunder, pillage, and pogrom.‏Well, you know from your own lives and the lives of nations, old habits die hard. Sometimes it takes more than a generation to effect a change of perception. Our tormentors are now undergoing a change of perception. They realize a simple truth. We are no longer powerless. We are no longer weak. As Herzl predicted in 1986, 'The Maccabees will rise again. The Jews who wish for a state will have it. We shall live at last as free men on our own soil. The world will be freed by our liberty, enriched by our wealth, and magnified by our greatness. And whatever we accomplish there for our own welfare will powerfully benefit all of humanity.'‏All this has happened. Israel is a fount of innovation and progress, which we share with all humanity. But the most important change is this. Our soldiers are truly the modern Maccabees. We refuse to surrender to terrorism. We do not bow our heads to antisemitism. We fight back. We do so on the battlefields of the Middle East. And with your help, we will fight antisemitism on the intellectual and political battlefields of the world.There is only one basic requirement for winning this war. I was recently in Washington, where I met President Trump. But I took time to meet 50 Jewish students, the leaders of tomorrow. They told me how they were being harassed on campus, violently harassed. One student told me that he was facing the dean of the university, who invited one of the Hamas killers to give a lecture.

In an elite American university. And I said, What are you doing about it? He said, I'm suing him. I said, Good for you. This is exactly what you should be doing. ‏Do not apologize. Do not bow your head. Stand strong. Stand together.‏And I say this to all of you: thank you for your clarity, and thank you for your courage.‏God bless you all. ‏G-d bless the Jewish people, and G-d bless the many friends of Israel here and around the world."Photo credits: Eclipse Media