Officials focused on confronting Iran’s behavior in the region as they gathered in Jerusalem on Thursday to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp from the Nazis.
Addressing around 40 world leaders, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged the international community to take swift action against those he called “the tyrants of Tehran” to avoid “another holocaust.”
He praised the US sanctions on Iran and said that countries of the world, “which stand united in condemning Nazism and its crimes, must take a similar, unified stance against Iran.”
“Israel must do everything in its power to defend itself,” he added.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, spoke with a different rhetoric. Putin called for international cooperation to settle crises and achieve peace.
He called for a summit of the permanent members of the UN Security Council [Russia, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and China] to “defend peace and civilization in the face of instability in the world.”
Russia is ready for this serious conversation anywhere and with any country, he affirmed.
Macron, for his part, stressed in his speech that the Holocaust should not be used to justify division or hatred.
“In our history, anti-Semitism always preceded the weakening of democracy,” he said. “No one has the right to invoke (those killed by the Nazis) to justify division or contemporary hatred.”
During the past two days, Netanyahu and Israeli President Reuven Rivlin held many political meetings with the event participants. According to political sources in Tel Aviv, the Iranian issue dominated the talks.
Netanyahu urged Macron during their meeting to follow the United States’ example and impose sanctions on Tehran.