El Papa León XIV ratificó la posición de la Iglesia “firme contra toda forma de antisemitismo” y el presidente de Italia, Sergio Mattarella, habló en el Día de la Memoria dedicado a las víctimas de la represión nazifascista contra los judíos, mientras que la primera ministra Giorgia Meloni dijo que las leyes raciales del fascismo fueron “una ignominia”.

La bandera italiana flameó a media asta en los edificios públicos.

El Papa, en su mensaje, recordó Nostra Aetate, en la que la Iglesia condenó “toda discriminación o molestia por motivo de lengua, nacionalidad y religión”. Dijo que “la memoria puede ser una lección iluminante para salvar a la humanidad de trágicos acontecimientos experimentados en la historia”.

“En particular el Día de la Memoria, que se celebra todos los años el 27 de enero para conmemorar a las víctimas del Holocausto”. Este día “es un reclamo para la conciencia interior de todos los hombres y mujeres para que puedan reforzar el sistema inmunitario de cada hombre y mujer de la familia humana frente a posibles nuevos horrores: los abismos de la historia, cuando prevalecen sobre la fraternidad un nacionalismo extremo, la desconfianza y el lenguaje del odio”.

León XIV recordó en su mensaje lo que afirmaron varios papas. Por ejemplo, Pío XII en su radiomensaje natalicio de 1942, con las tropas nazis en Roma, denunció a centenares de millares de personas “solo por razones de nacionalidad y de estirpe destinadas a la muerte”.

El pontífice en su mensaje evocó los “dolorosos recuerdos” de Juan Pablo II, el primer obispo de Roma polaco, quien recordó los padecimientos que sufrió su país por la ocupación nazi de Polonia. Era polaco el padre Maximiliano María Kolbe, recluido en el campo de Auschwitz, que se ofreció a sustituir a “un infeliz padre de familia, desconocido y sufriente”. El padre Kolbe sufrió la muerte por hambre. Hoy es un santo de la Iglesia Católica.

León XIV recordó “la lección de la Shoah” en las palabras del papa argentino Francisco, su predecesor, y dijo que “fue una exhortación a tener los ojos y el corazón siempre abiertos” ante estas circunstancias.

El papa Jorge Mario Bergoglio dijo al visitar la sinagoga de Roma el 17 de enero de 2016 que “el pueblo judío, en su historia, ha debido experimentar la violencia y la persecución, hasta el exterminio de los hebreos europeos durante la Shoah. Seis millones de personas, solo por pertenecer al pueblo judío, fueron víctimas de la más inhumana barbarie perpetrada en nombre de una ideología que quería sustituir al hombre por Dios. El 16 de octubre de 1943, mil hombres, mujeres y niños de la comunidad judía de Roma fueron deportados a Auschwitz. Hoy deseo recordarlos con el corazón. El pasado nos debe servir de lección para el presente y el futuro”.

El presidente italiano, Sergio Mattarella, habló a los italianos en la ceremonia por el Día de la Memoria celebrada en el palacio del Quirinal. Dijo que “el volver a proponerse y difundirse de manifestaciones de racismo y antisemitismo es índice de alta peligrosidad e interpela una acción rigurosa por parte de todos los países de la Unión Europea”.

“Nunca en la historia del hombre un exterminio fue tan largamente proyectado y programado en los mínimos detalles” como en el Estado nazi. De todas las profesiones fueron llamados ciudadanos para dar una contribución activa para realizar los homicidios de un dictador como Hitler y “de sus pérfidos cómplices”.

El sistema de exterminio “fue el fruto envenenado de una ruinosa mentira”. “Una mentira que se desarrolló a lo largo de la historia y de la cual la Shoah ha sido consecuencia grave y monstruosa”.

Mattarella explicó que “fue así que la pretendida inferioridad racial teorizada y enseñada hasta transformarla en ley, llevó a la individualización de los judíos, una minoría reducida desde el punto de vista numérico, como el peligro para la supervivencia del pueblo de la nación. Los hebreos fueron señalados como el mal absoluto”.

“Como italianos –agregó el presidente– volvemos a evocar con angustia la discriminación, la persecución, la deportación y la muerte de nuestros conciudadanos judíos, traicionados por las leyes raciales queridas por el fascismo y de tantos de sus adeptos vendidos a los nazis, con la complicidad de la monarquía”.

Mattarella dijo que “en estos días estamos aquí para recordar a las víctimas inocentes, seis millones de personas sofocadas en las cámaras de gas y fusiladas en los pelotones de ejecución”.

En su mensaje, la primera ministra Giorgia Meloni, líder de una coalición de centroderecha, dijo que “hoy celebramos a los Justos de cada nación”. “En esta jornada volvemos a condenar la complicidad del régimen fascista en las persecuciones, las búsquedas y las deportaciones. Una página oscura de la historia, confirmada en las leyes raciales de 1938”.

Alexander Vindman, the one-time National Security Council (NSC) aide whose testimony before Congress fueled the first impeachment of President Donald Trump, on Tuesday announced he’s launching a Democratic Senate campaign in Trump’s adopted home state of Florida.

Vindman, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, is aiming to challenge GOP Sen. Ashley Moody, who was appointed last year by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to fill the Senate seat left vacant when then-Sen. Marco Rubio stepped down to serve as Secretary of State in Trump’s second administration.

Republicans are defending their 53-47 Senate majority in this year’s midterm elections, and the 2026 Senate race in GOP-dominated Florida, which Trump carried by 13 points in 2024, was not considered a top target for Democrats. But Vindman’s campaign launch could give Democrats a known candidate who would likely bring national attention to the race.

Vindman, who was born in then-Soviet-controlled Ukraine, was in the spotlight as he testified in front of Congress about Trump’s infamous 2019 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that ultimately led to the Democrat-controlled House impeaching the president. Trump was later acquitted by the Senate.

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A combat veteran, Vindman was subsequently fired from his position with the NSC. He became a vocal Trump critic and later wrote two books and worked as a senior adviser for VoteVets, a Democrat-aligned group that helps to elect veterans.

«I stepped up when my country needed a soldier, I reported corruption at the highest levels of government, and now I’m stepping up again to fight for Floridians,» Vindman said in a social media post.

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And spotlighting his past clash with Trump, Vindman charged in his video that «this president unleashed a reign of terror and retribution, not just against me and my family, but against all of us.»

Former National Security Council Director for European Affairs Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman walks at the Capitol to review transcripts of his testimony in the impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump, in Washington, Nov. 7, 2019.  (J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo)

Vindman also became one of the first candidates to include a clip of this past weekend’s fatal shooting by federal agents in Minneapolis, Minnesota, of Alex Pretti, a VA nurse who was protesting Trump’s immigration crackdown.

«Today our country is in chaos. Thug militias attacking citizens,» Vindman said in his video under clips of the Pretti shooting as well as the fatal shooting of Renee Good, another U.S. citizen in Minneapolis who was demonstrating against the tactics of immigration enforcement agents.

Vindman also highlighted the issue of affordability, arguing «skyrocketing costs are crushing ordinary people, while the billionaires and career politicians profit.»

And Vindman claimed that Republicans «put Moody in the Senate to be a ‘yes’ vote for Trump and the billionaires. She’s not Florida’s senator. She’s theirs.»

This year’s Senate showdown in Florida is a special election, with the winner serving out the final two years of Rubio’s term before having to run again in 2028 for a full six-year term.

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Moody, who won two statewide Florida attorney general elections in 2018 and 2022, has been endorsed by Trump and doesn’t face any serious competition for the GOP nomination.

Republican Sen. Ashley Moody of Florida is running in the midterms to serve the final two years of now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s term in the Senate.  (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Vindman, who lives in left-leaning Broward County in southern Florida, joins a field of Democratic Senate candidates that includes state Rep. Hector Mujica and Brevard County school board member Jennifer Jenkins.

Whoever wins the Democratic primary will face a steep uphill climb against Moody.

The Cook Report, Inside Elections, and Sabato’s Crystal Ball, three top nonpartisan political handicappers, rate the race as solid or safe Republican.

«Florida is a ruby red state and Democrats have no path to flipping its Senate seat in 2026,» National Republican Senatorial Committee regional press secretary Nick Puglia told Fox News Digital. «Anyone who thinks otherwise is not living in reality.»

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Vindman isn’t the first member of his family to run for federal office.

His twin brother, Eugene Vindman, was elected to Congress in 2024, succeeding now Gov. Abigail Spanberger in a district in northern and central Virginia.

Leaders from around the world gathered in Jerusalem on Tuesday to highlight the global surge in antisemitism on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, marked annually on the anniversary of the 1945 liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi extermination camp.

An opening gala was held on Monday, during which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that the West’s democratic civilization is under threat from a destructive ideology that has infiltrated every country in Western Europe and the United States.

«They want to destroy the West as we know it. And they agree on one thing. What is the thing that they agree on? World War Jew. To conduct a world war, first against the Jews and against the Jewish state,» he said.

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«And for the radical Muslims, they are right, because there would be no West in the Middle East if the Jewish state is eradicated. There would be no obstacle for the further invasion of Europe if the Jewish state doesn’t exist. And it also appeals to their internal hatred of the Jews, which has common roots with antisemitism over the centuries,» Netanyahu added.

Among the prominent international figures attending the conference were Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, former Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Hungarian Minister for European Union Affairs János Bóka and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee.

«Antisemitism is rooted in a spiritual disease of raw evil,» Huckabee told Fox News Digital. «It’s the bigotry of believing oneself to be superior to another, which is the essence of all forms of irrational hate and racism. We all should be speaking up and standing up against it,» he said.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee speaks to Fox News Digital during an interview at the American embassy in Jerusalem, Israel. (Yoav Dudkevitch/ TPS-IL)

«Hating the Jews today is hating Christians tomorrow and some other group the next. It’s a cancer that is never satisfied until every healthy human relationship is destroyed. It originates in hell. Any and all efforts to identify such darkness is helpful. Being quiet about it is to accept it and agree with it,» the ambassador added.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog was the first speaker to address the conference on Tuesday, warning of a deteriorating reality for Jewish communities worldwide.

«The same old plague has been let loose on our society once again. The rationale may be different, but it is the same ancient poison, it has taken many forms, but it has always carried the same name, antisemitism,» he said.

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A tribute for Bondi Beach mass shooting victim, 10-year-old Matilda, whose last name is being withheld at the request of her family, at the Bondi Pavilion in Sydney, Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025. (Steve Markham/AP Photo)

Herzog noted that Jews now feel compelled to hide their identities on the streets of London and Paris, and that Jewish worshipers must be protected on Saturday mornings from Toronto to Boston to Buenos Aires.

He cited the killing of Jewish worshipers in Manchester, England, on Yom Kippur, the murder of innocents at a Chanukah celebration in Sydney, Australia, and the isolation and harassment of Jewish students on university campuses across the U.S. and Europe.

«When this happens,» Herzog said, «we are failing to meet our vow. We are failing to meet our duties to humanity.»

Herzog also addressed concerns in the United States, citing New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. «To deny the Jewish people and only the Jewish people the right to self-determination in their national homeland is antisemitism – even if you are the mayor of the city with the most Jews outside Israel,» he said.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog meeting leaders at the Second International Conference on Combating Antisemitism in Jerusalem, Israel on Jan 27, 2026. (Amos Ben-Gershom/GPO)

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The conference, titled Generation Truth, and hosted by Israel’s Minister of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Amichai Chikli, focused on three primary manifestations of modern antisemitism: violent Islamist antisemitism, progressive antisemitism that seeks to delegitimize Israel and exclude Jews from public life, and far-right antisemitism, which has gained renewed visibility in recent years.

On Tuesday, Chikli drew a connection between Nazi ideology and what he described as «Islamo-Nazism,» which he said underpins the worldview of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

«Eighty-one years have passed, and the Jewish people have still not fully recovered from the horrific campaign of annihilation carried out by Nazi Germany. Eighty-one years have passed and yet an axe is still raised against us seeking to destroy the small Jewish state and to harm Jews at every point on the globe, from the kibbutzim and communities in southern Israel still scared by the barbaric Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7 to Manchester and Sydney,» Chikli said.

A police vehicle parked outside the Manchester synagogue, where multiple people were killed on Yom Kippur in what police have declared a terrorist incident, in north Manchester, Britain, Oct. 5, 2025. (Hannah McKay/Reuters)

«This conference seeks to banish political correctness… and to mobilize all essential forces in the ideological and physical fight against the modern heirs of the Nazi,» he continued.

Also speaking at the conference was Sylvan Adams, president of the World Jewish Congress for the Israel region, who told Fox News Digital that on Oct. 8, 2023 — before the war in Gaza began and while Israel was still counting its dead — demonstrations took place across the globe celebrating the Hamas-led massacre.

He blamed the events on several countries that he said are part of an organized campaign led by Qatar, which he said serves as a frontline for the Muslim Brotherhood, with backing from Iran and, more recently, China — actors he argued exploit Israel and the Jewish people to intimidate and overturn Western society.

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Memorials at the site of the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack on the Supernova music festival near Kibbutz Re’im, Israel, on Monday, May 27, 2024. (Kobi Wolf/Bloomberg via Getty Images )

«After Israel appeared wounded and vulnerable on Oct. 7, they activated a massive, long-prepared campaign — investing vast resources, infiltrating institutions, and planting paid operatives in Western cities in an effort to deliver a final blow. But we see how deeply mistaken they were,» Adams said.

«We need to push back and remind leaders in the West, institutional leaders as well as political leaders, that we are under attack. Our way of life, our freedoms are under attack. It’s not Israel’s fight, this is a clash of civilizations, we are fighting for all of the West,» he added.