Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu opened his Holocaust Remembrance Day remarks by citing newly-released documents from the United Nations showing that the Allies were aware of the Nazis’ systematic extermination of the Jews at least two years earlier than previously known. He said, “If the powers in 1942 had acted against the death camps — and all that was needed was repeated bombing of the camps — had they acted then, they could have saved 4 million Jews and millions of other people,” Netanyahu said. “When terrible crimes were being committed against the Jews, when our brothers and sisters were being sent to the furnaces, the powers knew and they did not act.”
He also named more recent instances where “the world stands idly by and does not prevent genocide,” citing mass murders in Cambodia, Rwanda and Sudan. He also invoked Syria, calling U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to bomb Syrian targets in response to a chemical attack on civilians as a “point of light.”