Times Sq. Billboard Links Holocaust to Current Antisemitism

As the world marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Tuesday, Israel took to Times Square to deliver a stark message: History is repeating itself, and the world's Jewish population is once again being targeted while much of the world looks away.

The Israeli Consulate General in New York unveiled a new digital billboard campaign warning that antisemitism, incitement, and global silence are creating conditions disturbingly similar to those that preceded the Holocaust.

"Nearly 90 years after the Nazis rose to power, history is repeating itself," said Ambassador Ofir Akunis, Israel's consul general in New York.

Akunis warned that the failure of world leaders to confront rising antisemitism and organized boycott efforts against Jews is placing Jewish communities in danger worldwide.

"The silence of leaders around the world in the face of the surge in antisemitism, incitement, and boycott initiatives against Jews is a clear warning sign," he said.

The campaign was deliberately launched on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, observed each year on Jan. 27, the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi death camp in 1945.

The day honors the memory of the 6 million Jews murdered by Nazi Germany and its collaborators across Europe, while serving as a global call to confront antisemitism, Holocaust denial, and historical distortion.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day was established by the United Nations General Assembly in 2005 to ensure that the crimes of the Holocaust are never forgotten and never repeated.

Israeli officials say remembrance without action is empty, especially as antisemitic attacks, threats, and harassment have spiked across Europe, the United States, and beyond.

Akunis stressed that today's reality is fundamentally different from the 1930s in one crucial way.

"Unlike in the past, when the Jewish people did not have a state, Israel knows how to defend itself with strength and force," he said.

Akunis added that Israel possesses the military and intelligence capabilities necessary to repel any enemy openly calling for the destruction of the Jewish people.

"Israel will not hesitate to act to defend itself and to ensure that history does not repeat itself," he said.

The Times Square campaign is a collaboration between the Israeli Consulate in New York and the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

It follows a series of previous Israeli public diplomacy efforts aimed at exposing terrorist group Hamas' murderous activity following its Oct. 7, 2023 attack, countering misinformation, and highlighting the suffering of Israelis taken hostage by the group.

Those campaigns sought to confront what Israeli officials describe as moral equivalence and selective outrage toward Jewish victims of terrorism.