In a historic and emotionally charged session on February 18, 2026, the Israeli Knesset formally debated the situation in Biafra, with a senior lawmaker invoking the memory of the Holocaust to demand international intervention and drawing a direct comparison between the six million Jews murdered by N*z*s and the estimated six million Igbo lives lost since 1967.
The debate, which IgbereTV has obtained and translated exclusively, marks the first confirmed high-level parliamentary discussion on Biafra in Israel in decades and signals a potential shift in international attention toward the decades-old self-determination struggle.
Opening the debate, MK Ya’akov Margi of the Shas party delivered a passionate address from the Knesset podium, directly comparing the Igbo experience to the Jewish Holocaust.
“From then until today, the numbers are unfathomable. The data in our hands indicates that since the end of that war until our days, approximately two and a half million people of Biafran origin have been killed. In total, over all these years, we are talking about a fact of nearly six million souls.”
Margi paused deliberately on the figure:
“Six million. A chilling number, horrifying, and it tells us something. What we, as Jews, have known. This number shakes the heart and the depths of the soul.”
He warned of ongoing persecution, alleging that the Igbo face a stark choice reminiscent of historical ultimatums:
“The Igbo people are facing a cruel choice once presented to them by a former Nigerian Justice Minister: To convert to Islam, to die, or to live in eternal exile.”
Margi framed the issue as a moral imperative for Israel, invoking the nation’s historical trauma as grounds for action.
“Why should we intervene? The Jewish conscience obligates us. The Jewish conscience obligates us to intervene and to shout.”
He directly called on Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to:
“Raise this issue on every platform, in every international forum. Awaken the human conscience of the nations of the world, of the Gentiles. We have a feeling that it does not exist, as we experienced on our own flesh.”
Concluding his address, Margi declared:
“I call out here, from the podium of the Israeli Knesset, to the great world, to the entire world to wake up. T
o place this on the agenda.”
