EU Parliament: Herzog (Israeli President), “Antisemitism still exists”. Commemoration of Holocaust victims

“My heart and thoughts are with my brothers and sisters killed in the Holocaust, whose only crime was their Jewishness and the humanity they bore”, said the President of Israel, Isaac Herzog, in his address to the European Parliament in Brussels marking Remembrance Day. Recalling the victims of the Holocaust, the Israeli President began his speech with a traditional prayer: “O God, who art full of compassion, who dwellest on high, grant perfect rest on the wings of the Divine Presence to the souls of the six million Jews, victims of the Holocaust, who were killed, suffocated, burned, and martyred by the German murderers and their accomplices from other nations”. The Israeli President also stressed that the “Holocaust was not born in a vacuum. It is precisely because the Holocaust was predicated on much older antisemitic foundations that had taken root and flourished in Europe, that this dark abyss is a terrible, profound, and compelling lesson for the whole of Europe”. Today we are concerned about the “movements on the extremes of European and world politics, which proudly raise the ugly banner of antisemitism. Unfortunately, the picture is deeply disturbing”. Antisemitic discourse “festers not only within dark regimes, but also within the heartlands of the free, democratic West. Jew-hatred still exists. Antisemitism still exists. Holocaust denial still exists”.
Valentina Bombelli