JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opened Israel’s annual memorial day for the 6 million Jews systematically killed by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II by saying the lessons of the Holocaust guide him daily and issuing a warning to Israel’s enemies not to test it.

The Nazis and their collaborators wiped out a third of world Jewry and Netanyahu’s remarks illustrated how decades later the Holocaust is still a central part of Israel’s psyche. The state of Israel was established just three years after the end of the war and hundreds of thousands of survivors made their way here.

Netanyahu said Israel’s arch-enemy Iran, as well as the Islamic State group, are “publicly striving to destroy us.”

Netanyahu said the lesson of the Holocaust is that “we must be able to defend ourselves by ourselves against all threats and any enemy.” He said this lesson guides him “every morning and every evening.”

Netanyahu said Israel has transformed itself into a strong nation with one of the “strongest defensive forces in the world” and warned “those that seek to destroy us will put themselves in danger of destruction.”

He said that although there hasn’t been anything on the scale and scope of the Holocaust since World War II, the world has mostly stood by and not intervened in mass killings around the world from Cambodia to Sudan and now Syria.

However, Netanyahu said, “amid the darkness” there are some “points of light.”

Among them he said was U.S. President Donald Trump’s “determined answer to the slaughter of the Syrian children by chemical weapons.” He was referring to the U.S. missile strike earlier this month on a Syrian air base the U.S. believed to be the launching pad for a chemical weapons attack on civilians that killed dozens.

Syrian President Bashar Assad has strongly denied he was behind the attack in the opposition-held town of Khan Sheikhoun in Syria’s northern Idlib province.

Netanyahu said Israel is also not apathetic to the suffering in Syria and pointed out that Israel has helped thousands of wounded Syrians who reach its northern frontier, providing them with medical treatment in hospitals in Israel.

The Israeli flag was lowered to half-mast at the beginning of the ceremony Sunday evening as a military honor guard stood nearby. Psalms and the Jewish prayer for the dead were recited at the podium. Six survivors lit six symbolic torches to commemorate the 6 million dead at the main ceremony at Yad Vashem.

The annual memorial day is one of the most solemn on Israel’s calendar. Places of entertainment and restaurants shut their doors and TV stations either cease broadcasting or dedicate programming almost exclusively to Holocaust documentaries, interviews with survivors and melancholy music.

On Monday morning, Israel will come to a standstill as sirens wail for two minutes in the morning. Pedestrians typically stop in their tracks, and cars and buses halt on the streets while drivers and passengers step out of their vehicles to stand with their heads bowed.

Other ceremonies on the solemn day include the public reading of names of Holocaust victims at including Israel’s parliament and elsewhere around the country.

An annual report by Tel Aviv University on worldwide anti-Semitism released a few hours ahead of the ceremony said violent attacks on Jews dropped for a second straight year in 2016, but other forms of anti-Semitism are on the rise worldwide, particularly on U.S. university campuses.

There was a 45 percent rise in anti-Semitic incidents, mostly insults and harassment of Jewish students, on U.S. university campuses, the report said. These were usually connected to increased anti-Israel activities by pro-Palestinian groups on campus, said Dina Porat, a historian who leads the team of researchers behind the report.

Story: Ian Deitch

PARIS — Centrist Emmanuel Macron and far-right populist Marine Le Pen advanced Sunday to a runoff in France’s presidential election, remaking the country’s political landscape and setting up a showdown over its participation in the European Union.

French politicians on the left and right immediately urged voters to block Le Pen’s path to power in the May 7 runoff, saying her virulently nationalist anti-EU and anti-immigration politics would spell disaster for France.

“Extremism can only bring unhappiness and division to France,” defeated conservative candidate Francois Fillon said. “As such, there is no other choice than to vote against the extreme right.”

The selection of Le Pen and Macron presents voters with the starkest possible choice between two diametrically opposed visions of the EU’s future and France’s place in it. It sets up a battle between Macron’s optimistic vision of a tolerant France and a united Europe with open borders against Le Pen’s darker, inward-looking “French-first” platform that calls for closed borders, tougher security, less immigration and dropping the shared euro currency to return to the French franc.

With Le Pen wanting France to leave the EU and Macron wanting even closer cooperation among the bloc’s 28 nations, Sunday’s outcome means the May 7 runoff will have undertones of a referendum on France’s EU membership.

The absence in the runoff of candidates from either the mainstream left Socialists or the right-wing Republicans party – the two main political groups that have governed post-war France – also marked a seismic shift in French politics. Macron, a 39-year-old investment banker, made the runoff on the back of a grassroots campaign without the support of a major political party.

With 90 percent of votes counted, the Interior Ministry said Macron had nearly 24 percent, giving him a slight cushion over Le Pen’s 22 percent. Fillon, with just under 20 percent, was slightly ahead of the far-left’s Jean-Luc Melenchon, who had 19 percent.

The euro jumped 2 percent to more than USD $1.09 after the initial results were announced because Macron has vowed to reinforce France’s commitments to the EU and euro – and opinion polls give him a big lead heading into the second round.

While Le Pen faces the runoff as the underdog, it’s already stunning that she brought her once-taboo party so close to the Elysee Palace. She hopes to win over far-left and other voters angry at the global elite and distrustful of the untested Macron.

With a wink at his cheering, flag-waving supporters who yelled “We will win!” in his election day headquarters in Paris, Macron promised to be a president “who protects, who transforms and builds” if elected.

“You are the faces of French hope,” he said. His wife, Brigitte, joined him on stage before his speech – the only couple among the leading candidates to do so Sunday night.

Le Pen, in a chest-thumping speech to cheering supporters, declared that she embodies “the great alternative” for French voters. She portrayed her duel with Macron as a battle between “patriots” and “wild deregulation” – warning of job losses overseas, mass immigration straining resources at home and “the free circulation of terrorists.”

“The time has come to free the French people,” she said at her election day headquarters in the northern French town of Henin-Beaumont, adding that nothing short of “the survival of France” will be at stake in the presidential runoff.

Her supporters burst into a rendition of the French national anthem, chanted “We will win!” and waved French flags and blue flags with “Marine President” on them.

France is now steaming into unchartered territory, because whoever wins on May 7 cannot count on the backing of France’s political mainstream parties. Even under a constitution that concentrates power in the president’s hands, both Macron and Le Pen will need legislators in parliament to pass laws and implement much of their programs.

France’s legislative election in June now takes on a vital importance, with huge questions about whether Le Pen and even the more moderate Macron will be able to rally sufficient lawmakers to their causes.

In Paris, protesters angry at Le Pen’s advance – some from anarchist and anti-fascist groups — scuffled with police. Officers fired tear gas to disperse the rowdy crowd. Two people were injured and police detained three people as demonstrators burned cars, danced around bonfires and dodged riot police. At a peaceful protest by around 300 people at the Place de la Republique some sang “No Marine and no Macron!” and “Now burn your voting cards.”

Macron supporters at his election-day headquarters went wild as polling agency projections showed the ex-finance minister making the runoff, cheering, singing “La Marseillaise” anthem, waving French tricolor and European flags and shouting “Macron, president!”

Mathilde Jullien, 23, said she is convinced Macron will beat Le Pen.

“He represents France’s future, a future within Europe,” she said. “He will win because he is able to unite people from the right and the left against the threat of the National Front and he proposes real solutions for France’s economy.”

Fillon said he would vote for Macron on May 7 because Le Pen’s program “would bankrupt France” and throw the EU into chaos. He also cited the history of “violence and intolerance” of Le Pen’s far-right National Front party, founded by her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who was trounced in the presidential runoff in 2002.

In a defiant speech to supporters, Melenchon refused to concede defeat before the official count confirmed pollsters’ projections and did not say how he would vote in the next round.

In a brief televised message, Socialist Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve urged voters to back Macron to defeat the National Front’s “funereal project of regression for France and of division of the French.”

Socialist presidential candidate Benoit Hamon, who was far behind in Sunday’s results, quickly conceded defeat. Proclaiming that “the left is not dead,” he also urged supporters to back Macron.

Voting took place amid heightened security in the first election under France’s state of emergency, which has been in place since gun-and-bomb attacks in Paris in 2015. On Thursday, a gunman killed a police officer and wounded two others on Paris’ iconic Champs-Elysees boulevard before he was fatally shot.

Story: John Leicester, Lori Hinnant

PARIS — Early voting began overseas Saturday in France’s most nail-biting election in generations, and the 11 candidates seeking to become the country’s next president silenced their campaigns as required to give voters a period of reflection.

Opinion polls pointed to a tight race among the four top contenders vying to get into the May 7 presidential runoff that will decide who becomes France’s next head of state. But the polls also said that decision was largely in the hands of the one-in-three French voters who were still undecided.

Polls opened in France’s far-flung overseas territories but voting wouldn’t start until Sunday on the French mainland. France’s 10 percent unemployment, its lackluster economy and security issues topped voters’ concerns.

Political campaigning was banned from midnight Friday until the polls close at 8 p.m. Sunday.

Polls suggested that far-right nationalist Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron, an independent centrist and former economy minister, were in the lead.

However, conservative Francois Fillon, a former prime minister whose campaign was initially derailed by corruption allegations that his wife was paid for no-show work as his aide, appeared to be closing the gap, as was far-leftist candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon.

Security was tight – the government mobilized more than 50,000 police and gendarmes to protect 70,000 polling stations, with an additional 7,000 soldiers on patrol.

Security was a prominent issue after a wave of extremist attacks on French soil, including a gunman who killed a Paris police officer Thursday night before being shot dead by security forces. The gunman carried a note praising the Islamic State group.

Voters made their choices in the Atlantic Ocean territories of Saint Pierre and Miquelon as well as in French Guiana in South America, the Caribbean’s Guadeloupe and elsewhere. Voters abroad could also cast ballots in French embassies Saturday.

The mad-dash campaigning of the last few weeks came to an abrupt halt after the Champs-Elysees gun attack by 39-year-old Karim Cheurfi. Three suspects close to the attacker remain in custody, Agnes Thibault-Lecuivre of the Paris prosecutor’s office said Saturday.

Le Pen and Fillon canceled their last campaign events Friday over security concerns. Macron did too, but also accused his rivals of trying to capitalize on the attack with their anti-immigration, tough-on-security messages.

In a sign of how tense the country is, a man holding a knife caused widespread panic Saturday at Paris’ Gare du Nord train station. He was arrested and no one was hurt.

Well-wishers paid their respects Saturday at the site of the shooting, which was adorned with flowers, candles and messages of solidarity for the slain police officer, Xavier Jugele. Across from the Eiffel Tower, women from the group Angry Wives of Law Enforcement demonstrated against violence aimed at police.

Some believed French stoicism would prevent a lurch to the right in the presidential vote, even though the attack dominated French headlines.

“These 48 hours are not going to change everything … terrorism is now an everyday occurrence. It’s permanent, 24 hours a day. So we’re not afraid. If we’re believers in freedom, we must live with it,” said Marise Moron, a retired doctor.

“I’m not going to let myself be influenced by people who are trying to frighten us,” Paris resident Anne-Marie Redouin said near the heavily-guarded Eiffel Tower.

Others, fearful that Le Pen has been strengthened by the instability, said they would shift their votes from fringe candidates to make sure to keep the far-right out of power.

“With an attack such as this one, I think the National Front will get a good result. Therefore I’ll change my intention and cast a useful vote – either Melenchon or Macron,” said physics teacher Omar Ilys, 44.

The French presidential choice will resonate far beyond France’s borders, from Syrian battlefields to Hong Kong trading floors and the halls of the U.N. Security Council.

The election is also widely being viewed as a ballot on the future of the 28-nation European Union. The far-right Le Pen and the far-left Melenchon could pull France out of the bloc and its shared euro currency – a so-called “Frexit.”

A French exit could ignite a death spiral for the EU, the euro and the whole idea of European unity that was borne out of the bloodshed of World War II. France is a founding member of the EU and its main driver, along with former rival Germany.

Financial markets are already jittery over a possible Frexit, fearing capital flight, defaults or lawsuits on bonds and contracts. Le Pen’s team is downplaying possible apocalyptic scenarios and arguing that the euro – which is now used by 19 nations – is headed for a breakup eventually anyway.

If Le Pen or Melenchon win a spot in the runoff, it will be seen as a victory for the populist wave reflected by the votes for Donald Trump and Brexit – the British departure from the EU. Many French workers who have lost out by globalization are similarly fed up with establishment parties and attracted by promises of ditching the status quo.

Alternatively, if neither candidate makes it past Sunday’s first round into the runoff, that’s a clear message that populist nationalism is receding.

Macron and Fillon are committed to European unity and would reform labor rules. Macron has framed himself as a bulwark against Trump’s protectionism.

Le Pen and Melenchon blame free trade pacts for killing French jobs and want to renegotiate them.

Story: Thomas Adamson