(7 Apr 2013)
1. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli President Shimon Peres arrive for the ceremony at Yad Vashem holocaust museum
2. Flag is lowered to half mast
3. Holocaust survivor lighting torch
4. SOUNDBITE: (Hebrew) Shimon Peres, Israeli President:
"Those who ignore the threat of a Holocaust against one nation must know that the threat of a Holocaust against one nation is a threat of a Holocaust against all nations."
5. Cutaway of ceremony
6. SOUNDBITE: (Hebrew) Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Prime Minister:
"The murderous hatred against the Jews that has accompanied the history of our people has not disappeared. It has just been replaced with a murderous hatred of the Jewish state. What has changed since the Holocaust is our determination and our ability to defend ourselves."
7. Various of ceremony
STORYLINE
Israel opened its annual memorial day for the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust with a ceremony in Jerusalem on Sunday which marked 70 years since the Warsaw ghetto uprising - a symbol of Jewish resistance against the Nazis in World War II which resonates deeply in Israel to this day.
A ceremony took place at Yad Vashem, Israel's official Holocaust memorial, before hundreds of Holocaust survivors and their families, Israeli leaders, diplomats and others.
Israeli President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu both linked the desperate Jewish revolt of 1943 to the warrior mentality that ushered the establishment of Israel five years later.
"Those who ignore the threat of a Holocaust against one nation must know that the threat of a Holocaust against one nation is a threat of a Holocaust against all nations," Peres said.
Netanyahu called the uprising "a turning point in the fate of the Jewish people" where they turned from helpless victims into fearless warriors.
The 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising was the first large-scale rebellion against the Nazis in Europe and the single greatest act of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust.
Though guaranteed to fail, it became a symbol of struggle against impossible conditions, illustrated a refusal to succumb to Nazi atrocities and inspired other acts of uprising and underground resistance by Jews and non-Jews alike.
While the world marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27 - the date of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp - Israel's annual Holocaust memorial day coincides with the Hebrew date of the Warsaw ghetto uprising.
The Israeli flag flew at half mast and a military guard of honour stood at one side of the podium as poems and psalms were read, and the Jewish prayer for the dead was recited.
Peres, an 89-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate, also linked the Nazi genocide to Iran's suspected drive to acquire nuclear bombs and its leaders' repeated references to the destruction of Israel and its denial of the Holocaust.
He spoke a day after the latest round of international talks aimed at halting Iran's nuclear development programme failed to reach an agreement.
Netanyahu also cited the Iranian threats to destroy Israel and vowed that there will never be another Holocaust.
"The murderous hatred against the Jews that has accompanied the history of our people has not disappeared. It has just been replaced with a murderous hatred of the Jewish state," he said.
"What has changed since the Holocaust is our determination and our ability to defend ourselves," he added.
The stated links between the Holocaust and Iran showed how more than six decades later, the mass murder of Jews during World War II is still a central part of Israel's psyche.
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