Netanyahu on Holocaust Remembrance Day: Anti-Semitism a global issue

April 24 (UPI) -- Israel came to a 2-minute halt Monday as sirens across the country marked Holocaust Remembrance Day.

The deaths of up to 6 million Jews in Europe during World War II were acknowledged in ceremonies around the world.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke in Yad Vashem, Jerusalem's official Holocaust memorial site, warning that anti-Semitism remains a global problem. He praised President Donald Trump for ordering a raid on a Syrian air base earlier this month but blamed anti-Semitism on international support for the Palestinian cause.

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

At the Jerusalem ceremony, Holocaust survivors, aided by younger family members, lit memorial torches. An honor guard of the Israel Defense Forces stood symbolically to indicate Israel's capability of defending itself and Jews around the world. About 189,000 Holocaust survivors reside in Israel.

In Poland, about 10,000 people from about 40 countries marched a 2-mile route between the Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps, accompanied by a group of 75 Holocaust survivors.

Trump delivered a video message to the World Jewish Congress Plenary Assembly, which met in New York on Sunday, saying that Holocaust victims were "murdered by an evil that words cannot describe and that the human heart cannot bear."