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IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi proclaimed to the world from a podium in Germany on Monday that the Jewish Nation has "renewed itself in its Land" and that it would not be wise for Iran, or anyone else, to "test our power."
Ashkenazi made the statement as part of a speech he delivered mostly in Hebrew from Platform 17 of the Grunewald Train Station in Berlin, where a Holocaust memorial marks the forced deportations of tens of thousands of Jews to the Nazi death camps.
The German Bundeswehr (national defense force) Chief Of Staff, General Wolfgang Schneiderhan, accompanied Israel's military leader. Ashkenazi had earlier visited the Wannsee Villa where in 1942 the Nazi leadership conferred and decided to liquidate European Jewry. Ashkenazi's own father was a Bulgarian survivor of the Holocaust.
The IDF chief of staff noted the close relationship that exists today between the armies of Israel and Germany. "The very fact that the German Chief of the General Staff and the Israeli Chief of Staff are standing here together, shoulder to shoulder, 64 years after the Second World War, and the warm cooperation our militaries share, demonstrates our steadfast determination that never again will such atrocities occur," Ashkenazi said.
The need for cooperation in quelling the Iranian nuclear threat was a central issue on the agenda in talks between the two military leaders, and one that Ashkenazi underlined in his speech at the Holocaust memorial. "Anti-Semitism refuses to disappear from the world," he observed, with an oblique reference to the vitriolic rhetoric often heard in harangues by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad against the Jewish State. "It changes its face, language, path and justifications, but its aim remains the same. Today, state leaders openly declare their desire to destroy the State of Israel, and deny the right of the Jewish People to national sovereignty."
The Israeli military leader made clear, however, that Jerusalem would not tolerate an existential threat from the Islamic Republic, or from anyone else. "The Jewish nation has risen and has been revived in its Land, and the nation stands by its independence and its security. The Israel Defense Forces, the shield of the Jewish Nation, is not a an army that seeks to wage war -- rather it is an army of defense. We do not relish combat. But if war is forced upon us," Ashkenazi warned, "we will do all that is necessary to enable the citizens of Israel to live safely in their homes. No one should test our strength or resolve."
The IDF Chief of Staff added that past history has firmly engraved upon the Jews the lesson that they can rely upon no one but themselves:
"The wails of our Jewish brethren, who were marched onto train cars, humiliated, beaten and killed, rise from the silent steel plates that rest on this platform. At this moment, and forever more, their echoing cry is the injunction of Israel's obligation, and mine, as the current head of her army; our obligation to always remember and never forget the worst atrocities in the history of mankind, our obligation to never take the threats of those who would harm us lightly, our obligation to ensure our security ourselves, and never let anyone else control the future of Israel."
Ashkenazi then stated, in English: "In the name of the entire Jewish Nation, I am committed to do our utmost in order to prevent Jewish blood from being spilled once again."