Israel's Ambassador to UN Danny Danon's speech on International Holocaust Remembrance Day 2026
Ambassador Danon speaking at the UN on IHRD. Photo courtesy of UN.
By Danny Danon
Esteemed Holocaust survivors, United Nations Secretary-General Mr António Guterres, President of the General Assembly, Ms Annalena Baerbock, United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Mr Mike Waltz, Distinguished guests, We are gathered here today to remember the Holocaust.
The deliberate murder of six million Jewish men, women, and children by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. Alongside them, millions of others were murdered. It was the darkest chapter in human history.
We remember because memory matters. Because education matters. Because honoring the victims matters. We remember here, in the United Nations General Assembly, because the United Nations itself was founded from the ashes of that destruction.
But let me be honest with you. Today, remembrance alone is not enough. Because while we “remember,” Jews are attacked.
While we speak, hatred spreads. Words, slogans, and statements have failed to stop the violence. I stand before you as Israel’s ambassador to sound the alarm. The time for talk is over. The time for action is now.
In recent years, we have heard many warnings from this podium about the rise of antisemitism. About dangerous lies. About how hatred begins with language. Those warnings are right.
But they ring hollow when the lies that fuel antisemitism are allowed to spread, including here at the United Nations. When false narratives are repeated in this chamber, they do not stay here. They spread across the world with the rubber stamp of the United Nations. They harden into belief. They turn into hatred.
To my fellow ambassadors here today, when you return to your missions, ask for the numbers. How many antisemitic incidents were reported in the past year in your country?
How many threats? How many attacks?
Then ask the harder questions:
- How many indictments?
- How many prosecutions?
- How many convictions?
When you see that gap, do not explain it away. That gap is the measure of failure.
It is the space where hatred grows. It is not enough to come here once a year to speak about remembrance and then go home and allow the same hatred to spread unchecked.
Remembrance without action is empty. Later today, you will hear from Holocaust survivor Sara Weinstein. Sara was just a little girl when the Nazis forced her and her family into a ghetto in July 1941. She survived hunger, fear, and miserable conditions, all because she was Jewish.
In late 1942, her family was hidden by a local family who risked everything to save them. Then a village mob, fuelled by anti-Jewish hatred, arrived. Shots were fired.
Chaos followed. As bullets tore through the room, Sara’s mother threw herself on top of her, using her body as a shield. Her mother was killed protecting her daughter.
We wish this were only a memory from the Holocaust. It is not.
On 7 October 2023, Hamas terrorists crossed into Israel. They went house to house. They hunted families. They murdered parents in front of their children.
Sixteen-year-old Rotem Matias survived because his parents died protecting him.
As terrorists stormed his home, Rotem lay completely still beneath his mother’s body. Deborah Matias was shot and killed by Hamas terrorists. Her lifeless body lay on top of Rotem for hours.
Those scenes were not imagined. They were recorded. They were celebrated by terrorists. Hamas did not invent hatred of Jews. It has revived it, with new weapons and new slogans. Their goal is not borders or compromise. It is extermination. The threat is modern. The hatred is not.
Again, Jews are forced to use their own bodies to protect those they love. That is the reality we are confronting today. This violence does not stop at Israel’s borders.
Last month, on Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, Alexander Kleytman and his wife Larisa stood together at a Hanukkah celebration. Both were Holocaust survivors.
When terrorists opened fire on the Jews gathered there, Alexander did what Sara’s mother did in 1942, and what Rotem’s mother did on 7 October. He shielded his wife with his body. He was eighty-seven years old. He was murdered protecting her. Around them, others did the same. People scrambled to cover children.
What we saw was horrific and tragically familiar. This was a massacre targeting Jews. This is not memory. This is now. Bondi was not an isolated act. It followed 7 October, the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. It followed synagogue firebombings. It followed shootings and deadly attacks, from Manchester to Washington, from Paris to Sydney.
This is not a coincidence. Hatred that begins with words does not remain words.
It spreads. And it kills.
Antisemitism did not end in 1945. It adapted. Today, it often hides behind hostility to Israel.
We hear it in chants to “globalize the intifada.” We see it in calls to boycott Israel. We see it on college campuses, where Jewish students are harassed, excluded, and intimidated.
This is not protest. This is not free speech.
This has a name. That name is antisemitism.
Targeted violence does not begin with graves. It begins with dehumanization. That is the lesson of the Holocaust.
Hatred does not spread on its own. It is enabled. It is legitimized. It is given authority.
Especially over the last two years, this institution has failed that test. We have all seen it. Claims of “genocide.”
A claim made by a senior United Nations official that fourteen thousand babies would die within forty-eight hours. That claim did not come from the fringe. It came from the heart of the United Nations.
It was made without evidence. It was repeated without correction. It travelled the world stamped with UN credibility.
It had consequences. It inflamed hatred. It legitimized lies. It put a target on Jewish communities around the world.
Hamas came with the same hatred and the same intent as the Nazis: to murder Jews, to terrorize families, and to erase entire communities.
They slaughtered 1,200 innocent people. They beheaded men. They raped women. They burned children alive. More than 250 people were taken hostage. But unlike 1941, today there is a different reality.
We crushed and stopped Hamas’s terror machine. We brought home every hostage. Every single one of them.
We waited 843 days. Today, the pin comes off.
We have shown that the Jewish people are no longer defenseless. Today, we have our own army, the soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces.
The days when Jews are massacred without response are over. Yet from 8 October, while we were still counting our dead and pushing back terrorists, we faced relentless condemnation from within this very institution. Hypocrisy. Bias.
The campaign against Israel began while Israelis were still being hunted. But despite the double standards, despite the pressure, we stood tall. Our brave IDF soldiers, my son, my daughter, our children, stood up and stepped forward to defend our people.
They are the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors and of the founders of our nation, now standing proud to ensure Jewish survival.
I stand here and thank our heroes who fought like lions:
with determination, with resilience, with bravery.
To our soldiers, I say this: We honor your courage. We admire your sacrifice. We salute you. Thanks to you, every Jew feels safer today.
To my fellow ambassadors, the responsibility now turns to you and to your governments. Standing with Israel does not mean agreeing with us on everything. It means standing against terror. It means confronting hatred before it turns violent. It means refusing to tolerate incitement, in your streets, on your campuses, and online.
It means showing real leadership. Because too many in this building have buckled. They buckled under the pressure of biased media, false propaganda, and antisemitic campaigns.
Do not repeat that failure. Do not surrender moral clarity for political gain. Do not wait until words turn into blood.
Never again demands action.
Not tomorrow.
Not in a year.
Never again is now!