At 10am local time on Monday Israel fell silent as the Jewish state marked Holocaust Memorial Day.<br /><br />Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu laid a wreath at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum. A statement from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas 24 hours earlier called the Holocaust “the most heinous crime” in modern history.<br /><br />It is seen as the strongest comment he has yet made publicly on the subject. Last week Abbas and his Fatah group reached a unity deal with its Islamist rival Hamas. <br /><br />“I think its an overture to American public opinion, to world public opinion, to try to placate and somehow smooth over the fact that he made a terrible step away from peace. He made a giant leap backward away from peace, because he embraced Hamas that calls for the extermination of Jews worldwide, for the eradication of Israel, and actually acts on a daily basis against peace,” responded Benjamin Netanyahu to Mahmoud Abbas’s statement.<br /><br />People across Israel paid their respect to the estimated six million Jews murdered in the Nazi genocide during World War II. Many stood outside their cars to take part.<br /><br />Around 250,000 Holocaust survivors live in Israel about half the number which arrived in the country since it was established in 1948.
