2026 could be a turning point. The well-known tolerance of the Jewish state towards global antisemites, who have become accustomed to persecuting individual and collective Jews with impunity, now risks facing responses proportional to the gravity of the crimes committed.
The formal warning was given yesterday on Yom Hashoah, both by the Prime Minister and the Israeli Minister of Education. The International March of the Living, now in its 38th year, was being held under the theme of combating antisemitism worldwide.
"Jewish state will fight antisemitism both in Israel and beyond", Israeli Education Minister Yoav Kisch told JNS on Tuesday, speaking ahead of the International March of the Living in Poland. "We stand together with the entire Jewish world, and it’s clear to us that in the Diaspora and in the State of Israel alike, there is a difficult period with rising antisemitism and a lot of hatred toward Jews,” said Kisch. “We have a state, we have an army and we are capable of standing against anyone who seeks to harm us. Wherever this happens, both in Israel and beyond, we as Jews will fight it,” he vowed.
Also Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a prerecorded address due to the tensions with Iran, told the official state ceremony that "While the establishment of the State of Israel “did not end the aggression against us, nor the antisemitism that is surging once again everywhere, unlike the past, whoever seeks to destroy us now, brings upon themselves destruction on a scale they never could imagine.”
The Jewish people represent less than 0.2% of the world's population, but they have a state that is part of the restricted range of superpowers, a success story that extends to many nations, and an inexhaustible memory. Jewish temples remain alive, Jewish culture continues to produce, and apparently the time has come for Jewish human rights to be defended with Israel using the means that each particular case justifies.
