by News Agencies and Israel Hayom Staff
Pence lashes out at EU over Iran, which, he says, "openly advocates another Holocaust."
U.S. Vice President Mike Pence speaks at the Warsaw Uprising Monument
in Warsaw, Thursday Photo: Reuters
U.S.
Vice President Mike Pence paid homage Thursday to the suffering of the
Jewish and Polish people under German occupation during World War II
with visits to memorials honoring their suffering and heroism.
The heavily symbolic visits to a city
destroyed by Adolf Hitler's forces were gestures of friendship to two of
America's closest allies, Israel and Poland. They came a day before
Pence will make his first visit to Auschwitz, the memorial site where
Nazi forces killed 1.1 million people, most of them Jews, in what was
then occupied Poland.
Pence first joined Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu and Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki in honoring the
wartime Jewish insurgents who rose up against Nazi German forces in the
Warsaw Ghetto uprising of 1943.
Joined by their wives, the three took part
in a wreath-laying ceremony at the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising memorial. A
cantor recited a prayer in Hebrew as the three couples faced the dark
memorial, with representatives of Poland's small surviving Jewish
community in attendance.
Pence and Netanyahu then held talks in the
POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, located on the same square
in the heart of the former ghetto, which tells the story of 1,000 years
of Jewish life in Polish lands.
Netanyahu wrote in a museum guest book:
"May the spirit and heroism of the Warsaw Ghetto Jewish resistance
fighters who staged the first organized uprising against Nazi occupation
in all of occupied Europe be an eternal reminder of the dangers of
powerlessness in the face of tyranny."
In remarks in front of journalists ahead of
the meeting, Pence, a conservative Christian, told Netanyahu that it
was "very humbling for me to be here with you in this very special place
on this sacred ground. To hear a prayer sung, and to remember the
heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto."
The revolt ended in death for most of the fighters, yet left behind an enduring symbol of resistance.
Netanyahu said their resistance saved the honor of the Jewish people.
Pence was later accompanied by Morawiecki
to visit a memorial to the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, an important site for
Poles where U.S. President Donald Trump gave a speech in 2017.
In that revolt, Polish insurgents took up
arms against the powerful German forces, holding out for 63 days before
the Germans crushed it. In retaliation, the Germans murdered some
200,000 Poles and razed Warsaw to the ground.
Pence and Netanyahu were in Warsaw for a
conference on the Middle East co-hosted by the U.S. and Poland that
focused heavily on confronting Iran.
In a speech to the conference earlier
Thursday, Pence drew a line from the war that began 80 years ago to the
Middle East of today, saying "the Iranian regime openly advocates
another Holocaust."
Pence accused European powers on Thursday
of undermining Washington's crackdown on Iran by trying to break U.S.
sanctions against Tehran, in remarks that were likely to further strain
transatlantic relations.
European powers, who oppose the Trump
administration's decision to pull out of a nuclear deal with Iran, were
openly skeptical of a conference excluding Tehran. France and Germany
declined to send their top diplomats, while British Foreign Secretary
Jeremy Hunt left before Thursday's main events.
"Sadly, some of our leading European
partners have not been nearly as cooperative," Pence said. "In fact,
they have led the effort to create mechanisms to break up our
sanctions."
European countries say they share
Washington's concerns about Iran's regional behavior but believe
withdrawing from the nuclear deal was a mistake, and have promised to
try to salvage the deal as long as Iran continues to abide by it. In
practice, European companies have accepted new U.S. sanctions on Iran
and abandoned plans to invest there.
Pence called on the Europeans to follow
Washington and exit the agreement: "The time has come for our European
partners to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal and join with us."
He said a new European scheme to trade with
Iran, known as the Special Purpose Vehicle, was "an effort to break
American sanctions against Iran's murderous revolutionary regime."
"It is an ill-advised step that will only
strengthen Iran, weaken the EU and create still more distance between
Europe and the United States," he said.
European diplomats at the conference
rejected Pence's accusations: "We strongly disagree," a diplomat from a
major European power said. "We want to push Iran to good results and
don't want to push Iran outside of its nuclear commitment."
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on
Friday met in Brussels with EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini,
who didn't attend the Warsaw summit citing a scheduling conflict at
NATO.
Pompeo told a news conference on Thursday
that there were differences during the summit meeting over how to get
Iran to change its ways, but there was unanimity, including from
Europeans, that Tehran posed a global threat.
"We make no bones about it, we need more
sanctions, more pressure on Iran," Pompeo said in closing remarks.
"There was not a defender of Iran in the room. No country. No country
spoke out and denied any of the basic facts that we have all laid out
about Iran, the threat it poses, the nature of regime."
The summit was notable because of the
presence of Israel alongside wealthy Arab states Saudi Arabia, Kuwait,
Oman, Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Washington aims to narrow
differences between its Israeli and Arab allies to isolate Iran.
News Agencies and Israel Hayom Staff
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/2019/02/15/us-vice-president-honors-jews-poles-who-resisted-nazis/
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