From generation to generation: 6 things to know for April 12

1. Israelis stood still this morning for a nationwide moment of silence in remembrance of the 6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

• A two-minute siren wailed across the country at 10 a.m. for Israel’s annual Holocaust Remembrance Day, when Israelis pay respects to the Jews systematically killed by Nazi Germany in World War II. Buses and cars stood still on streets and highways as Israelis stepped out of their vehicles and stood with heads bowed. The somber day is also marked by ceremonies and memorials at schools and community centers. Restaurants and cafes close, and TV and radio stations play Holocaust-themed shows.
• Thursday’s Hebrew papers are dominated by Remembrance Day, featuring dozens of photos, interviews with Holocaust survivors, and various memorial events. The Yedioth Ahronoth daily spotlights the concern of how to memorialize the Holocaust in the future, when there will be no survivors left. On its front page, Yedioth runs an op-ed written by Ruth Bondy, a Holocaust survivor who wrote about the issue before she died last year.
• “When we [Holocaust survivors] are gone, life will go on as usual,” Bondy wrote in 2016. She said the dozens of Holocaust organizations, reparations groups and government agencies will be relieved when the last of the Holocaust survivors dies. “And we go, the pain will disappear into the evil that has accompanied us all of our lives. With all of the research and reading I have done, I still cannot grasp how the extermination of Jews was able to happen. And this evil is still here today,” she wrote.
• The Haaretz daily features the story of Levie Kanes, an Israeli man who this week found out the identity of the woman who saved him from the Nazis as an infant. For years, Kanes believed an unidentified Christian nurse removed him from a transport in the Netherlands bound for a concentration camp at the last minute. But, several days ago, he received an email from the daughter of a Dutch Jewish woman who actually was the one responsible for taking him off the transport and putting him up for adoption. “I was in shock, but it was a nice kind of shock,” Kanes said, recalling the email he received from the daughter of Nelly Roelofs, who he discovered lives on a kibbutz 30 minutes away from his home.

2. At a Holocaust memorial event at Yad Vashem last night, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Iran not to test Israel.

• “Events of recent days teach that standing up to evil and aggression is a mission imposed on every generation,” Netanyahu said in a speech to hundreds of Holocaust survivors and their families, Israeli leaders, diplomats and others.
• Netanyahu said one of the big lessons of the Holocaust is that “murderous evil” that goes unchallenged “spreads quickly and gradually threatens all of humanity. Today as well, a murderous regime threatens us, threatens the entire world peace. This regime explicitly declares that it intends to annihilate us, the Jewish state,” he said, in a reference to Iran.

3. Russian President Vladimir Putin is calling on Netanyahu not to take any action that could further destabilize the situation in Syria, following an alleged Israeli strikes against a regime military base on Monday.

• In a phone call last night, Putin urged Netanyahu “to abstain from any action that could further destabilize the situation in the country, which would represent a threat to its security,” the Kremlin said in a statement. Putin “stressed the importance of respecting Syria’s sovereignty,” and the two leaders “discussed recent Israeli airstrikes against the T-4 air base.”

4. A fighter from the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas was killed this morning by a retaliatory Israeli strike in the Gaza Strip, the health ministry in the enclave said.

• Mohammed Hijaila was killed and another man seriously wounded early during the airstrike, the Hamas-run health ministry said, confirming he was a member of the group’s militant wing. A security source said he was one of a number of Hamas fighters manning an observation point east of Gaza City when it was struck early this morning.
• Israel confirmed the strikes, saying they were retaliation for gun fire.

5. Israel’s ambassador to Poland says that it’s in Israel’s best interest that Warsaw not cancel its controversial Holocaust law entirely.

• Anna Azari told Army Radio that canceling the law could stir up anti-Semitism and lead to renewed debates in the Polish parliament about defending national honor. “For us, I think it would preferable if the courts would give a precise, reduced interpretation” of the law, she said.

6. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is stressing the need to prevent the situation in Syria from “spiraling out of control.”

• The UN chief expressed regret that the UN Security Council has been unable to reach agreement on the issue of chemical weapons in Syria, and said Wednesday that he called the ambassadors of the five veto-wielding permanent council nations — the US, Russia, China, Britain and France — “to reiterate my deep concern about the risks of the current impasse.” He also renewed his “outrage” at reports of continued chemical weapons use in Syria.
• Yesterday, US President Donald Trump warned Russia to “get ready” for a missile attack on its ally Syria, suggesting imminent retaliation for last weekend’s suspected chemical weapons attack. “Russia vows to shoot down any and all missiles fired at Syria,” Trump wrote. “Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and ‘smart!’ You shouldn’t be partners with a Gas Killing Animal who kills his people and enjoys it!”