IRAN DOING ALL IT CAN TO DESTROY ISRAEL - VICE PREMIER SILVAN SHALOM
21 April 2009
Silvan Shalom made his remarks about Iran at a Holocaust memorial service
Vice Premier Silvan Shalom warned on Tuesday that Iran was doing everything it could to destroy Israel, speaking at the former Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. He was later to take part in the annual March of the Living, held on at the site on Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day.
“Iran is trying to do everything they can in order to wipe Israel off the map and at the same time to undermine the moderate Arab Muslim regimes in the Middle East,” Shalom said.
The former foreign minister was speaking in reference to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech at the Durban II racism conference, which he called shameful.
Ahmadinejad on Monday accused Israel of being a most cruel and repressive racist regime in his speech at the conference in Geneva. He also accused the West of using the Holocaust as a pretext for aggression against Palestinians.
President Shimon Peres and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, meanwhile, read out the names of relatives killed in the Holocaust at a Knesset ceremony on Tuesday in remembrance of the six million Jews who perished in the Nazi Holocaust.
“[They] were slaughtered, along with 2,060 members of their community in the town of Wiszniewo in August 1942, by the Nazis and their local accomplices, who gathered the residents of the ghetto in a synagogue that was made of wood and brutally murdered them with gunshots and fire,” said Peres.
“My grandfather, who walked at the head of the community wrapped in a tallit [prayer shawl], straight to the synagogue that was set alight by the Nazis. My grandmother, Rebecca Meltzer; my grandfather, Tzvi “Herschel” Meltzer; my teacher and rabbi who during our separation at the train station, upon my immigration to the Land of Israel, told me [these] words: Be a Jew.”
At 10 A.M., the whole country came to a standstill for two mournful minutes on Tuesday as air-raid sirens pierced the air to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Cars came to a halt and people froze in their tracks, many with heads bowed, in memory of the victims. An official wreath-laying ceremony at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial followed. In deference to the solemnity of the day, restaurants, bars and places of entertainment were closed.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Shimon Peres and Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi attended the event Yad Vashem event, which was titled “every one has a name.”
The Holocaust Remembrance Day service then moved to the Knesset. The main Holocaust memorial service was to be held at Yad Vashem at 1 P.M.
Israeli leaders Monday vowed that there would not be a second Holocaust, their pledges ringing in the shadow of a United Nations conference against racism in Geneva perceived as anti-Semitic.
At the official opening ceremony at Yad Vashem on Monday evening, Netanyahu said Holocaust deniers would not be permitted to repeat a genocide against Jews. He also criticized the president of Switzerland for meeting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday.
Israel boycotted the conference, along with the U.S. and eight other
countries.
See Related: WE WON’T LET HOLOCAUST DENIERS REPEAT GENOCIDE AGAINST JEWS - PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU
See Related: IRAN CAN PRODUCE NUCLEAR BOMB IN 30-60 DAYS
See Related: SAN FRANCISCO MARKS HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY
See Related: HOMELAND SECURITY WARNS U.S. RIPE FOR SPREAD OF RIGHT-WING EXTREMISM
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