October 7 and Israel’s war against Hamas underscored Monday’s International Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration at the UN, an event featuring President Isaac Herzog marking the 80th anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation.
Secretary-General António Guterres opened the special session before the General Assembly by acknowledging more than a year has passed since the “appalling October 7 terror attack by Hamas.”
“We welcome at long last the ceasefire and hostage release deal,” Guterres said. “The deal offers hope as well as much-needed relief. And we will do our utmost to ensure it leads to the release of all hostages.”
Guterres said since the beginning of the war that he’s asked for the unconditional release of all hostages and for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.
While not specifying Israel, UN General Assembly President Philémon Yang called out alarming global conflicts where there have been massive killings of civilians, women, and children.
נאום נשיא המדינה בטקס רשמי לציון יום הזיכרון הבין-לאומי לשואה בעצרת הכללית של האו"ם https://t.co/ITVh8ptTtq
— יצחק הרצוג Isaac Herzog (@Isaac_Herzog) January 27, 2025
Disregard for international and humanitarian law should not be tolerated, he said, noting the UN’s promise of “never again.”
Omer Neutra
Herzog’s remarks began with poetic recognition of the yellow hostage pin on his lapel and invocation of Omer Netura, a New York-born-and-raised IDF tank commander whose body has been held by Hamas since October 7.
“Omer’s great-grandfather Yosef Neutra was a Holocaust survivor and a freedom fighter who survived the Shoah carrying just a few coins in his pocket,” Herzog said. “Louise, Omer’s aunt, took her grandfather Yosef’s coins and fashioned them into the yellow ribbon hostages symbol – surrounded by barbed wire.”
Neutra’s parents, Ronen and Orna, were in the audience.
“The coins that survived humanity’s darkest abyss became the canvas for creating a pin that symbolizes the story of a nation,” Herzog said. “A symbol of survival, a symbol of faith, a symbol of hope, a symbol of longing, a symbol of remembrance.”
According to Herzog, Israel has evidence that Hamas drew inspiration from the Nazis in planning the October 7 attacks.
Herzog then turned forceful with sharp criticism of the international body he stood before, starting with the General Assembly’s 1975 resolution declaring Zionism as a form of racism.
He spoke of his father, Chaim, who tore up the resolution before the assembly while serving as Israel’s ambassador to the UN.
“It took 16 years for this assembly to revoke that shameful resolution,” he said, adding that today, Israel finds itself again at a “dangerous crossroads in the history of this institution.”
Herzog accused the UN and the International Criminal Court of “exhibiting moral bankruptcy” and blurring the distinction between good and evil.
“I ask you: how is this possible? How is it possible that international institutions, which began as an anti-Nazi alliance, are allowing antisemitic genocidal doctrines to flourish uninterrupted in the wake of the largest massacre of Jews since World War II,” he said.
Herzog turned his focus to Iran, a UN member state he said is “explicitly scheming and acting to destroy a fellow UN member state – the State of Israel.”
The world cannot continue turning a blind eye to the global threat posed by Iran, he said, both directly and through its proxies.
“Under no circumstances will we accept any challenge to the Jewish people’s legitimate right to self-determination in our land – in the State of Israel,” Herzog said. “It is time to acknowledge: Challenging our right to exist is not diplomacy; it is plain antisemitism.”