The 24-hour period began with an evening ceremony at Yad Vashem, the national Holocaust memorial, where Netanyahu and other dignitaries spoke. Holocaust memorial day is one of the most solemn on Israel's calendar. Israel, founded in 1948 in the wake of the Holocaust, is today home to a large but rapidly dwindling community of fewer than 180,000 aging survivors. It says the Islamic militant group is responsible for civilian casualties because it used residential areas to carry out attacks. Israel says it was acting in self-defense against Hamas rocket fire. The Palestinians and human rights groups accuse Israel of using excessive force and not taking enough safeguards to protect civilians. Over 2,200 Palestinians were killed, more than half of them civilians, according to U.N. The ICC investigation is looking at Israeli military activity in Gaza during the 50-day war in 2014. Today we have a country, we have protection and we have the natural and complete right, as the sovereign country of the Jewish people, to defend ourselves from our enemies.” “During the Holocaust,” he said, “we had no rights, no country, no protector. Netanyahu called the investigation “absurd” and accused the court of distorting its original mission - rooted in the Nuremburg trials of Nazi leaders after World War II. Netanyahu also used the occasion to lash out at the International Criminal Court, which has launched a war crimes investigation against Israel that will focus in part on Israel's wartime practices in the Gaza Strip. and Iran announced last week that they were starting indirect talks aimed at reviving the deal, a development that raised concerns in Israel. back into the agreement but that Iran must reverse its violations. President Joe Biden, who was vice president under Barack Obama when the original deal was negotiated, has said he wants to bring the U.S. Netanyahu strongly opposed the deal, saying it did not include sufficient safeguards, and welcomed the Trump administration's withdrawal from the agreement in 2018. The 2015 agreement, spearheaded by the Obama administration, imposed curbs on Iran's nuclear activities in exchange for the lifting of painful economic sanctions. Israel accuses Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons, a charge Iran denies. Israel considers Iran to be its greatest enemy, citing the Iranian government's calls for Israel's destruction, its support for anti-Israel militant groups and Iran's military presence in neighboring Syria. We have only one obligation: to prevent anyone who seeks to destroy us from carrying out his plot.” “An agreement with Iran that will pave the way for nuclear weapons - weapons that threaten us with destruction - we will not be obligated to such an agreement in any way. “History has taught us that deals like this, with extremist regimes like this, are worth nothing,” Netanyahu added. Speaking as world powers are launching a new effort to bring the United States back into the foundering 2015 deal, Netanyahu also said that Israel was not obligated to respect it. JERUSALEM (AP) - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday urged the world not to revive the troubled international nuclear deal with Iran as he opened Israel's annual memorial day for the 6 million Jews who perished in the Holocaust.
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