He made his comments during the opening ceremony of Holocaust Remembrance Day at Yad Vashem’s Mount of Remembrance in Jerusalem, in which he also noted the severe difficulties and loneliness experienced by the country’s Holocaust survivors during the COVID-19 pandemic, 900 of whom have died due to the disease.
He noted that an international agreement between world powers and Iran was once again under discussion, in reference to the indirect talks that commenced on Tuesday in Vienna between the US and Iran mediated by officials from the UK, France, Germany, Russia and China.
“To our best friends I say – an agreement with Iran which paves its way to nuclear weapons that threaten us with destruction – an agreement like this will not bind us,” vowed the prime minister.
“Only one thing binds us, to prevent those who seek to destroy us from carrying out their plans. During the Holocaust we did not have the power to protect ourselves and we did not have the privilege of sovereignty. We had no rights, no state, and no defense.
“Today we have a state, we have the power to defend ourselves and we have the natural and full right as the sovereign state of the Jewish people to protect ourselves from our enemies,” Netanyahu continued.