‘Won’t cower in fear,’ says Netanyahu on holocaust remembrance day
Jerusalem, Jan 27 (EFE).- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Friday said the Jewish state would not “cower in fear” of new threats of “lethal” weapons in an oblique reference to Iran’s quest for nuclear arsenals.
“There are those who still call for our destruction, day in and day out. We will not cower in fear nor will we allow the threats of these tyrants to intimidate us,” Netanyahu said in a statement on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The day is marked on Jan.27, the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in 1945.
The world commemorates the 6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust and millions of other Nazi victims every year on this day.
“We in Israel mark this event by honoring the sacred memory of those who perished at the hands of a murderous Nazi regime, and we vow that this will never, ever, happen again to our people,” the firebrand prime minister said.
He said the difference between then and now was that the Jewish people have Israel that could protect itself.
“We have built up a powerful state that will not allow our enemies to inflict the very pain, suffering, and devastating loss our people experienced during the holocaust.”
Without naming any country or a group, he said the enemy of Israel knew that “we can and will defend ourselves, and we will not allow our enemies to possess an ability to carry out its murderous agenda.”
“We see them on their steady march towards obtaining the most lethal of weapons and I say to them here and now – we will stop you from obtaining them,” he said, obliquely referring to the Iranian nuclear weapons program.
Western powers led by the United States have been making diplomatic efforts to limit Iran’s atomic program.
The now almost-defunct 2015 nuclear deal drastically reduced Iran’s uranium stockpile and capped its enrichment to 3.67 percent.
But Netanyahu lobbied with then-president Donald Trump and prompted the US to withdraw from the pact.
Head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog Rafael Grossi warned that the Islamic Republic had accumulated 70 kg of uranium enriched to 60 percent purity, with another 1,000 kg enriched to 20 percent purity.
The quantity should be enough to make several nuclear weapons, said Grossi Tuesday in Brussels, speaking to the European Parliament’s security and defense subcommittee.
He said he would travel to Iran next month to revive the deal that would restrain the nuclear program of the Islamic republic. EFE
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