Israel’s President and PM lead a national assembly on Holocaust Day Eve

A national assembly in Jerusalem marking the eve of Israel’s annual Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Day heard President Reuven Rivlin caution against the rise of the far right in Europe 80 years after World War II. Holocaust survivors attending the assembly raised six beacons in memory of the six million Jews who died in the Nazi Holocaust. Rivlin challenged those who argued that one could love Jews and hate Israel as a crude falsehood which had been exposed. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu lamented the way that  hatred of Jews was manifested today in vile attacks on worshipers in a synagogue, such as the murderous attack in San Diego, and, before that, in Pittsburgh, as well as in the desecration of Jewish graves and the publication even in reputable media of cartoons and articles dripping with hate for Jews and Israel.

This was an oblique reference by Netanyahu to a recent offensive cartoon carried in The New York Times for which its editors were forced to apologize.