Israel's Netanyahu says non-Jews 'untrustworthy' in Holocaust commemoration speech

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has implied that non-Jews are "untrustworthy" in a video statement issued on Sunday, ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day.

In his message, Netanyahu said that a Holocaust survivor told him "gentiles who make promises are not to be trusted," without comment.

He added that "Israel is the one and only refuge for the Jewish people", and if Israel "doesn’t "protect itself, no one else will".

Six million Jews were killed by Nazi Germany across German-occupied Europe during World War II.

"These heroic [Holocaust] survivors are right. In the terrible Holocaust, there were great leaders in the world who stood by, so the first lesson of the Holocaust is this: If we don’t protect ourselves, no one will protect us. And if we have to stand alone, we will stand alone," Netanyahu said.

Israeli political analyst Yonatan Touval described Netanyahu’s words as "giving the middle finger to Israel’s closest allies who rushed to its rescue" following the events of October 7, which saw Hamas launch an unprecedent attack in the south of the country which killed an estimated 1,160 Israelis.

Israel has been waging a deadly in Gaza for almost seven months, killing at least 34,735 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injuring over 78,000 more.

The United States, has provided billions of dollars in financial and military aid over the decades, and has offered constant backing to Israel despite the atrocities it has committed against Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

European countries have also proclaimed their backing for Israel in its war on Gaza.

Netanyahu also used his speech to reject international pressure to halt the military campaign, amid the ongoing US college campus protests, which are calling for a divestment from Israel and end to the war.

The word "gentile" is controversial and has often been used by Israeli religious and political figures to "other" and discriminate against non-Jews.

In 2016, Sephardic Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef said that "gentiles should not live in the Land of Israel" while in 2010, his predecessor, the late Ovadia Yosef said that gentiles only existed to serve Jews.

“Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat… That is why gentiles were created,” Yosef said.