The following is the full text of Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar’s speech at the Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony at the Foreign Ministry on April 14, 2026, before the foreign ambassadors serving in Israel.
Distinguished ambassadors, ladies and gentlemen:
Paul Celan wrote in his chilling “Death Fugue": A man lives in the house your golden hair Margarete/Your ashen hair Shulamit/ He plays with the snakes/ He calls out play death more sweetly/Death is a master from Deutschland/ He calls scrape those fiddles more darkly then as smoke/You’ll rise to the sky/Then you’ll have a grave in the clouds/There you’ll lie at ease.
Alongside commemorating the Holocaust and its lessons, we have a commitment to commemorate the Righteous Among the Nations. The rare moral courage of the few righteous stood out in the wave of evil, and the many who cooperated or stood by and allowed it. Among them were also diplomats who deserve special mention today.
Giorgio Perlasca
An Italian who posed as the Spanish Consul General in Budapest. He issued “letters of protection” to hundreds of Jews, housing them in Spanish-protected buildings.
Carl Lutz
The Swiss Vice-consul in Budapest. In 1944, he issued “letters of protection” to thousands of Jews, placing them under Swiss protection.
Despite orders to evacuate, he remained in Budapest throughout the siege until February 1945 to ensure the safety of the Jews under his care.
Chiune Sugihara
The Japanese Consul in Kovno, Lithuania. In 1940, following the Soviet annexation of Lithuania, he was ordered to close the consulate.
Before leaving, and in direct opposition to his government’s instructions, he spent weeks writing by hand thousands of Japanese transit visas for Jewish refugees, enabling their escape.
In 1941, Hans Frank, Nazi governor general of occupied Poland, said, “We must finish off the Jews... We must annihilate the Jews, wherever we find them and wherever it is possible.”
The Nazi regime was pure evil. Hitler had a step-by-step approach to bring about his goals: the elimination of the Jewish people and the domination of Europe and the world. The historic lesson that mankind must learn from the Holocaust must run through understanding the free world’s moral failure that led to those dark days. Tragically, the free world did not step up in the face of pure evil. It allowed Hitler to conquer Europe—country by country—and eventually exterminate 6 million Jews.
It retreated from confrontation with Nazi Germany.
Countries that said “this is not our war” found out a short time later that it is their war. They chose appeasement, allowing Hitler to occupy Europe, country by country. First, Hitler invaded Austria. Then they sacrificed Czechoslovakia in the 1938 Munich agreement. The free world sacrificed Czechoslovakia, hoping it would satisfy Hitler’s murderous appetite—only to find out that Hitler violated the Munich agreement. The rest of continental Europe soon fell to the Nazis, including: Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, Yugoslavia, Baltic States, Ukraine, Romania and more.
Hitler’s defeat was not accomplished mainly due to the bravery of the free world, but rather due to his own mistakes. His foolish invasion of Russia in 1941—in violation of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact—drew the Soviet Union into the war against its will. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor brought the Americans into the war. Europe, in fact, fell before the Axis countries attacked the Soviet Union and the United States, which changed the balance of power in the war and history. Historical operational mistakes, not moral clarity, led to Hitler’s defeat.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Today, the world faces another pure evil regime: the Islamic Republic of Iran. The ayatollah regime murders its own people. It butchered tens of thousands of them, just three months ago. It recently resumed its executions of its own people. The regime madly attacks its neighboring countries. It fires ballistic missiles deliberately at civilian populations. You, distinguished ambassadors here with us today, know it well. Some of your homes and embassies were hit by Iranian missiles in these war crimes. The regime openly calls for Israel’s elimination, and acts toward its murderous goal.
The international community didn’t do anything special. They took it as something normal that one country calls for the elimination of another. The regime’s arms—Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and the Houthis—also vowed to eliminate Israel.
The regime spreads terror and bloodshed in the Middle East and beyond. It acts in your countries: spreading terror and subversion, at times through their diplomatic embassies. It recruits criminal gangs across Europe to target Iranian dissidents, and Jewish communities and Israeli embassies. It arms and funds its proxy terror states: Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis in Yemen. The regime exports radical Islamist revolutions in other countries.
It routinely violates agreements. In June 2025, the International Atomic Energy Agency found Iran in breach of its nuclear non-proliferation obligations.
The regime’s ballistic missile range—despite its lies—already covers all of European territory. We saw this in its strike on the Diego Garcia base, 4,000 kilometers away from Iran.
Iran threatens its own people, the region, Israel, Europe and America.
It’s meddling in Africa and Latin America.
It’s the greatest threat to global peace, security and stability.
Yet most of the free world is watching the war against the Iranian regime, its nuclear and ballistic missile programs and terror proxies, from the sidelines at best. “It’s not our war”, we constantly hear. Appeasement is again prevailing over moral courage. Running from the challenge will not make it go away. Just as burying one’s head in the sand, like an ostrich, will not remove the threat. But we have learned our lesson from the Holocaust.
We are one of the world’s most ancient nations. We should have been one of the largest nations today. For 2,000 years, our people were murdered across the world. The Holocaust was the peak of the long, tragic history of a people without the ability to defend themselves. Millions of Jews murdered in the Holocaust, simply for being Jewish, cried out for help, yet no one saved them.
Today, there are those who tell us, you are strong. I’ve heard from some of my colleagues, but I don’t want to mention countries now. Some people have a problem seeing strong Jews. It’s also not what they got used to seeing throughout history. Yes, the State of Israel is strong. We’re strong because we have no choice. Here, in the neighborhood we live in, either we will be strong or we simply will not be. We don’t act because of historical traumas. We act because our existence is truly at stake.
The ayatollah regime and its proxies devised a plan of elimination. It’s not only public declarations revealing their intentions. They had a concrete plan. A “conventional” elimination plan through huge quantities of ballistic missiles, and a multi-front ground-forces invasion of their proxies on Israel’s borders. We’ve got huge amounts of intelligence after Oct. 7 on it, from all fronts.
Alongside this, a step-by-step, non-conventional elimination plan through nuclear weapons. They were very close to achieving nuclear weapons. If we hadn’t acted last June, and now, with our American friends, it’s likely they would’ve already had nuclear weapons—alongside a huge arsenal of ballistic missiles.
Prime Minister Menachem Begin said in June 1981, about his government’s decision to destroy the Nuclear Reactor in Iraq: “I tell you: I went through difficult nights—real torment—thinking about what will happen to our children, for God’s sake. Do you not understand my feelings?... Do you not understand that before my eyes I see my two young nephews who were murdered, and all the children of Israel? There it was Zyklon B. Here too it is poison—radioactive.”
The responsibility of leadership is to act. To safeguard the lives of one’s people and its future. “Operation Rising Lion” and “Operation Roaring Lion” were difficult but necessary decisions to make. We knew there would be risks and prices to pay. But we understood that the meaning of not acting is burying one’s head in the sand in the face of looming danger. A danger of elimination.
We already acted to prevent nuclear proliferation in the past.
In 1981, as I mentioned, under Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Israel destroyed Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program in Osirak. The international community condemned Israel at the time. The same international community later formed coalitions against Saddam Hussein in 1991 and 2003. Some of those who condemned us later thanked us for making their operations possible. We don’t know what they would’ve done if Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons. I personally heard in Washington, D.C., from a very, very senior official in 2002 that America is lucky Israel acted in 1981.
In 2007, Israel destroyed the Syrian nuclear reactor of the murderous Assad regime. The same dictator that the world later boycotted, who used chemical weapons against his own people afterwards and killed so many of them. Imagine what Assad would’ve done with nuclear weapons, had Israel not acted? He clearly would’ve still been in power today.
We will never let our enemies obtain a nuclear weapon to realize their ambition of our elimination.
The Islamic Republic of Iran is the greatest threat to global peace and security. It’s the modern version of pure evil. The task of leadership today, of free nations, is to ensure that evil does not prevail. That evil will not threaten our way of life. Our values. And our very existence. We remember our six million murdered brothers and sisters. We will pass on their memory and the lessons of our painful past. We will uphold our vow.
Never Again!
