‘ Hypocrisy is screaming to the sky,’ Netanyahu declares

Israeli premier: World ignores anti- Semitism

Sirens wailed across Israel and thousands marched at the Auschwitz death camps in Poland on Monday as the world marked Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking at Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem memorial, warned that anti- Semitism and apathy to cruelty remain a global problem. He lauded President Trump for his military strike on Syria after a chemical weapons attack this month, and he blamed anti- Semitism for international support for Palestinians in the Israeli- Palestinian conflict.

“The old- new anti- Semitism is common among some in the West and is also common in U. N. institutions,” Netanyahu said. “Hypocrisy is screaming to the sky. And as for the world’s indifference, has anything changed? One must admit that the answer is mainly no.”

Across Israel, everything stopped for two minutes while the sirens sounded. Workers took a break, and cars halted abruptly on highways while Israelis bowed their heads in a two- minute homage to the estimated 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis and their collaborators.

In Poland, the March of the Living drew about 10,000 people from more than 40 countries, accompanied by an honorary delegation of 75 Holocaust survivors up to 103 years old, The Jerusalem Post reported. The 2- mile route connects the sites of the Auschwitz and Birkenau death camps. The march was led by Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, chief rabbi of Tel Aviv and a survivor of the Buchenwald extermination camp.

A delegation of officials from 12 European nations took part in a commemoration at the Birkenau death camp.

Shmuel Rosenman, chairman of the march, emphasized that the memory of the Holocaust must be handed down to the younger generations so they don’t let a similar tragedy happen. “Last year, the world lost Elie Wiesel, Nobel laureate and conscience of the world,” Rosenman said. “Elie Wiesel, who was with us in our very first march in 1988, said, ‘ If you listen to a witness, you become a witness.’ ”

SEBASTIAN SCHEINER, AP Israelis in Tel Aviv pause Monday as a siren sounds in memory of Holocaust victims. “Has anything changed?” the prime minister asked.