23 November 2023
Yad Vashem Chairman Dani Dayan is taking a hard stance against the acute resurgence of antisemitism worldwide. The chairman of the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem delivered a powerful speech at the "Rome-Jerusalem Emergency Summit on Global Antisemitism," held at the Senate of the Republic of Italy and sponsored by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, at the initiative of Italian Senator Giuliomaria Terzi di Sant'Agata, President of the European Union Policies Commission of the Senate of Italy. Other distinguished participants included Dan Diker, President of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and Dr. Giuseppe Pecoraro, Italian National Coordinator for the Fight against Antisemitism.
In his address at the summit, Dayan focused attention on antisemitism in the form of anti-Zionism, which has gained ground since the mid-1970s and today is perhaps the most notorious and mainstream form of antisemitism. In recent weeks, it has reared its head repeatedly around the world, from incidents in the Russian Federation to the iconic Sydney Opera House and in prestigious universities as well as in online forums
Yad Vashem Chairman Dani Dayan remarked:
"I just returned from visiting several American universities in the northeastern US area where genocidal slogans have been echoed as a type of mantra calling for the destruction of Israel. In these meccas of higher education, the incubators of future leaders, pseudo-academic, pseudo-scientific, pseudo-intellectual theories justifying the elimination of the Jewish state have emerged forcefully. Sadly, we are all too familiar with similar phenomena. Less than a century ago we saw how prestigious German universities, like Heidelberg University, no less respected than Harvard or the London School of Economics, lent academic backing to the most despicable forms of antisemitism, hatred and genocidal theories. Antisemitism found fertile ground at universities across Europe at that time. If that could happen in the cradle of European culture in the 20th century, it could happen anywhere in the 21st century. The surge in antisemitism today, demands a resolute response. We must hold current world leaders and leaders in higher education to their commitment to 'Never Again' in the hopes that they were not just hollow slogans. "Never Again is NOW.
