Today, unlike previous generations, “Israel will always defend itself by itself,” Minister of Education and Diaspora Affairs Naftali Bennett said Wednesday evening.
Speaking at the Masua Institute at the start of Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel, Bennett stressed Israel’s ability and responsibility to protect itself, while also praising and celebrating the bravery of the many Jews who fought the Nazis.
“What should Israeli students remember? That in the darkest days of the Jewish People no one stood with us. We were alone, defenseless. The French handed us in, the Ukrainians butchered us, the Poles often helped the killers, the Dutch didn’t care. And the Americans and allies who in June 1944 already knew of Auschwitz and didn’t bomb it. A few bombs on the gas chambers and the murder machine would have halted. But the bombs weren’t dropped,” Bennett stated.
"Those pilots and planes which we did not have 74 years ago in Auschwitz are he pilots and planes which ensure our existence today.”*