“Operation Roaring Lion” against Iranian nuclear sites fulfilled the Jewish state’s promise to prevent a second Holocaust, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday night.
Had the Israeli and U.S. militaries failed to act, “the names Natanz, Fordow, Isfahan and Parchin might have been remembered eternally in infamy, just like Auschwitz, Treblinka, Majdanek and Sobibor,” the prime minister said in Hebrew remarks aired during the state ceremony for Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day (Yom Hashoah), which was held via a prerecorded broadcast due to the tenuous ceasefire with Tehran.
“In the Holocaust, the poet Uri Zvi Greenberg wrote: ‘We were an extinct people like a wild beast in a hunt.’ In contrast, today, our people fight back against our oppressors. During the Holocaust, we were an abused animal crying in agony. Today, however, we have a state which is stronger than ever, which roars with power,” declared Netanyahu.
“The regime of the ayatollahs sought to develop nuclear bombs and manufacture tens of thousands of lethal ballistic missiles intended to annihilate us. It funded and armed its terror proxies, which sought to suffocate us in a ring of fire. At the same time, it spread a fanatical ideology across every continent, defining the West as an existential threat. They thought they could do this unhindered, but no more,” the premier continued.
The Israel Defense Forces has been “systematically crushing the Iranian axis of evil” across the Middle East to ensure that future generations will not look back and “ask what if, with a sense of missed opportunity,” he said.
While the establishment of the State of Israel “did not end the aggression against us, nor the antisemitism that is surging once again everywhere,” according to Netanyahu, “unlike the past, whoever seeks to destroy us now, brings upon themselves destruction on a scale they never could imagine.”
“On this Yom Hashoah, let us remember that the State of Israel is at the peak of its power. Who could have imagined eighty years ago that our daring air force pilots and American military pilots would defend the Middle East, wing to wing? Defending Israel, the United States, and something else: we are defending Europe,” stated the prime minister.
Accusing European nations of having “forgotten so much since the Holocaust,” as well as of “moral weakness,” Netanyahu said they “can learn many things from us, primarily: the sharp distinction between good and evil, which, in the moment of truth, requires us to go to war for the sake of good, for the sake of life.”
“Dear Holocaust survivors, citizens of Israel, no other nation could have accomplished what we have done: to bring about this immense transformation, from Holocaust to rebirth, a rebirth rich in achievements that amaze the family of nations,” he said, vowing that “the flourishing State of Israel will continue to serve as a beacon of liberty, progress and prosperity.”
“Am Yisrael Chai! [The People of Israel live],” Netanyahu concluded his address.
Established in 1951, Yom Hashoah is observed annually on the 27th of the Hebrew month of Nissan. The theme of this year’s state ceremony, “The Jewish Family During the Holocaust,” highlighted the family as a source of identity, strength and human connection even in the face of unimaginable loss. In ghettos, concentration camps and hiding places, families preserved dignity and hope under the harshest conditions. Many survivors went on to rebuild their lives in the Jewish state.
Israel is home to some 111,000 survivors and victims of antisemitic persecution, according to government estimates released ahead of Holocaust Remembrance Day 2026. Women make up about 63% of survivors, most of whom are in their 80s and 90s.
Israel will come to a standstill on Tuesday morning, when a two-minute siren will sound nationwide at 10 a.m. in honor of Yom Hashoah. The siren tradition began in the 1960s and has become one of the nation’s most solemn national rituals, with public ceremonies, educational programs and survivor testimonies set to take place throughout the day.
