Wearing a yellow Star of David with the words “Never Again,” Israel ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan delivers a fiery speech to the United Nations Security Council against Hamas's “final solution” for the Jews.
“Hamas is not seeking a “solution” to the conflict. They are not interested in dialogue. The only solution Hamas is interested in is the Final Solution – the annihilation of the Jewish people,” he told the UNSC on Monday afternoon during a special meeting on the Gaza war.
The star both he and his delegation wore on their chest was designed to visually link the terror group’s killing of 1,400 Jews, including entire families, in Southern Israel on October 7 with Nazi Germany in World War II. The Nazis forced European Jews to wear a yellow star and gassed them to death, before burning their bodies.
Many of the Hamas victims on October 7, were burned and dismembered, in some cases while they were alive.
The United Nations, including the Security Council, has yet to condemn Hamas for the attack, a move which Erdan said is reminiscent of the global silence with regard to the Holocaust during World War II.
“Today after innocent Jewish babies were burned alive, this Council is silent,” Erdan said.
The 15-member UNSC has forgotten its purpose, Erdan said as he explains that he planned to continually remind it of its purpose by wearing a Yellow Star of David with the words Never Again on his chest at each meeting.
“We will wear this star until you wake up and condemn the atrocities of Hamas,” Erdan stressed.
“From this day on, each time you look at me you will remember what staying silent in the face of evil means,” Erdan stated.
Yad Vashem chairman Dani Dayan slammed the move, explaining that it dishonored the victims of the Holocaust and the State of Israel.
”We were deeply saddened to witness members of the Israeli delegation to the UN donning yellow badges," Dayan stated on Tuesday.
"The yellow badge symbolizes the historical vulnerability of the Jewish people and their dependence on the mercy of others. Today, the scenario has changed. We have an independent nation and a formidable army.
“We determine our own fate. Instead of a yellow badge, we should be proudly displaying a blue-and-white flag.”
Erdan told the council that this was personal for him as he recalled that during World War II, the Nazis destroyed his the Transylvania village where his grandparents lived with their seven children and transported the family to Auschwitz.
Until this month, the story of his grandfather Chaim, the sole survivor of the entire family seemed like a “horror story” from a different era, he said.
"Khamenei is the new Fuehrer" - Erdan
He underscored the similarities between the two stories of destruction, those of his family, who were among the six million Jews killed the Holocaust and the Israeli communities Hamas destroyed on October 7.
“Entire communities were exterminated – only this time the murderers were Hamas Nazis. Entire Israeli families were turned into smoke and ash, no different than the fate that my grandfather’s family met in Auschwitz,” Erdan said.
The similarity was not accident as both groups share an ideology of exterminating Jews, which with Hamas, also extends to the destruction of Israel, Erdan explained.
“Hamas, are modern day Nazis – from their appalling inhuman violence to identical genocidal ideologies,” Erdan stated.
The UNSC should be denouncing Hamas, including for using its own citizens as human shields, rather than attacking Israel for the Palestinian deaths occurred while the IDF routes out the terror group from Gaza.
“I’m sorry to say, but should this Council have existed on June 6, 1944, it would be intensely debating how much electricity and fuel the citizens of Munich had, as the Allies approached the shores of Normandy,” he said.
But Hamas is not alone in promoting a murderous ideology, Erdan pointed out.
“Hamas carried out the attack on behalf of Iran, whose supreme leader is best compared however was a proxy group for Iran, whose Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is best compared to the former Nazi leader and German chancellor Adolf Hitler,” Erdan stated.
“Hitler’s Third Reich was envisioned to be a Thousand-year Empire stretching across continents, just as Khameini envisions his radical Shia hegemony to stretch across the region and beyond,” Erdan said.
“The Ayatollah regime is the Nazi regime, and their army includes Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, the Houthis, the Revolutionary Guard, and other savage jihadists. Instead of shouting 'Sieg Heil,' these radical Nazi Islamists scream, 'Death to Israel! Death to America! Death to England!'” Erdan said.
“Today the world is watching the rise of a Shia Islamist Reich,” Erdan warned.