As the country’s most powerful politicians, including the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, attended a ceremony on Thursday morning at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, three Holocaust survivors in their 80s stood at the entrance holding a sign aloft: “If we have lost our compassion for the other, we have lost our humanity.”

About 40 miles (64km) away in a square in central Tel Aviv, thousands, including descendants of Holocaust survivors, stood holding photos of Palestinian children who had been killed since the war began. Dozens more lined the roads of the city dressed in black, holding out empty pots to symbolise the starvation of those in Gaza.