Holocaust Rememberance Day speech by MK Abbas Mansour ( @mnsorabbas), Islamic Movement Deputy Head, Chair of Joint Arab List party.

Mr Speaker, fellow Knesset Members,

I will speak today of the potency of the Shoa and of heroism.

Not based on books and coincidental quotes from the internet but based on a moral worldview, an internal refelection with the human being inside me and historical insights I have picked up over the years.

Twenty six years ago I first stood in silence for two minutes, mostly respecting fellow students at the Hebrew University.

Today I stand and deliever a prayer from the Quran for the souls of six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust during the Second World War.

As an Arab-Palestinian and as a believing Muslim, who was educated on the teachings of late Sheikh Abdullah Nimr Darwish, founder of the Islamic movement, I empathise with the pain and suffering throughout the years of Holocaust survivors and the families of those who perished.

I stand here and express solidarity with the Jewish people, here and around the world. The people chosen by the Nazis as a target for mass murder and genocide. And I say here Never Again.

I bow my head before the heroism of men and women who participated in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, against the decree of death and the sentiment of despair, in order to preserve the Image of God.

I also bow my head before heros of different peoples, righteous among the nations, Christian, Muslim and other, and in particular Arabs and Muslims at Paris's Great Mosque and at the Muslim state of Albania, who embraced and sheltered Jews during the war.

Albert Assoulin, a Jew who fled from a German death camp, says that over 1,700 resistance fighters, a small part of them not Jewish, found shelter at the mosque, particularly thanks to the mosque's imam.

Albania, the sole Muslim-majority European country, succeeded where other European countries have failed. Incredibly, the number of Jews in Albania at the end of the Second World War was greater than at its beginning.

Holocaust denial is a remanent of Nazi ideology, a moral failure, a betrayal of the values of truth and justice, and a transgression of a core principle in Islam - "״شهادة الصدق والعدل- the testimony of truth and justice.

Bosnia's former Grand Mufti Mostafa Ceric declared:

"The danger of genocide denial is not only denial of the truth regarding the physical murder of a people, because any one who denies the real evil of genocide is ready to perpetrate this evil again".

@Dr_MustafaCeric

The power of the Holocaust obliges us as human beings to separate momentarily from national and religious disagreements, and of course political views, so as to be alone with the victim and feel the pain.

I have no explanation for why this happened. I do not know. I have an understanding that human beings are capabale of doing this again when they lose the Image of God within them and when they ignore the right of the other to life in dignity and in liberty.

A politician or a religious leader or any person who fails to shed away racism and hate for others and who does not stop to insitigate fighting and wars, should not touch the Holocaust and should not desecrate its memory.

Some Jews say and emphasize Never Again in the Jewish collective context. Some Jews say Never Again in the universal context, for all humanity.

Both are right.

As a believing Muslim and as a member of the Palestinian people who suffered and continues to suffer, for dozens of years, I pray that all the inhabitants of this land, Jews and Arabs, will draw and internalize the humane lesson.

That all of us will recognize the suffering of the other people, its rights for liberty and dignity, and that we shall realise the vision of peace, security, partnership and tolerance, between the two peoples and the two states.

Thank you very much.