In a moving annual ritual, Israel briefly came to a standstill on Thursday for two minutes at 10:00 am as air raid sirens blared to honour the victims of the Holocaust.
Pedestrians stopped walking and stood where they stopped. Drivers stopped and stood in silence beside their vehicles to honour the six million Jews killed by the Nazis during World War Two.
Ceremonies took place across the country. Last year Covid-19 restrictions forced most memorials to be held online only, and the ageing survivors of the genocide period were confined indoors.
Israel has now lifted some of its pandemic restrictions as more than half its population has been vaccinated,
At Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu drew a parallel between the Nazi genocide and the threat the Jewish state faces from Iran’s nuclear weapons programme.
Netanyahu insisted that Israel would not be bound to a nuclear deal with Iran if that would enable the Islamic republic to develop nuclear weapons.
Discussions are underway in Vienna aimed at rescuing the 2015 international agreement over Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
“During the Holocaust, we had neither the capacity to defend ourselves nor the sovereignty to do so,” Netanyahu said. “Today we have a state, a defence force and we have the full and natural right as a sovereign state of the Jewish people to defend ourselves against our enemies.”
Israel accuses its arch-foe, Iran, of seeking to develop nuclear weapons. Tehran insists its nuclear programme is civilian in nature.