[ssba]

“We will not belittle any threats. Nor belittle shameful statements calling for the extinction of the Jewish people. Yet, while we are prepared, we are not scared …The horrors of the past and the threats of the present will not dictate our lives, nor shape the lives of our children. They will not dim our hopes for a future of creativity and prosperity.”

“There are those who mistakenly think that the State of Israel is some form of compensation for the Holocaust. There is no greater mistake. The State of Israel is not a compensation for the Holocaust. The State of Israel was established, in its own right, out of a love and longing for an ancient homeland, by virtue of a dream that came true, a dream that became a reality. Not out of the fear of extinction or out of hatred of the other.”

“Seventy years after the liberation of the death camps, we stand before you and we swear an oath. All of us, each and every one of us, has a number tattooed on their arm, yet, at the same time and in the same breath, we remember: we came from Auschwitz, not because of Auschwitz.” (Israeli President Reuven Rivlin speaking at the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony at Yad Vashem, 15/04/2015)