Bodies of kosher market victims in Israel ahead of funerals
Four caskets arrive at Ben Gurion airport before Jerusalem burial ceremony, to be attended by PM, president and members of the public
The bodies of four French Jews killed in a jihadist attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris arrived in Israel early Tuesday ahead of a funeral in Jerusalem.
Yoav Hattab, Philippe Braham, Yohan Cohen and Francois-Michel Saada were among 17 people gunned down in Paris during three days of bloodshed that shook France to the core and sent shock waves through its Jewish community, the third largest in the world.
Cohen, 22, was an employee of the HyperCacher store; Yoav Hattab, 21, was a student of Tunisian origin and the son of the chief rabbi of Tunis; Phillipe Barham, 45, was an executive at an IT company, a father of four and the brother of a rabbi; and François-Michel Saada, 64, was a retired father of two.
They will be laid to rest in a joint funeral at the Givat Shaul cemetery on the city’s western outskirts at 12 p.m. (1000 GMT). Hattab’s body lay in state in a Bnei Brak yeshiva on Tuesday morning, and family and friends were eulogizing him ahead of the funeral.
Among those taking part in the ceremony will be Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Reuven Rivlin and opposition leader Isaac Herzog, along with other Israeli ministers and officials. France’s Ségolène Royal, a former presidential candidate and current Minister for Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy, was also expected to attend.
The four were shopping at the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket in eastern Paris on Friday shortly before the start of the Sabbath when it was stormed by Islamist gunman Amedy Coulibaly. All four were shot dead and another 15 people taken hostage by Coulibaly before police stormed the building, killing him.
Coulibaly had links to the two Islamic extremists behind the massacre of 12 people at the Paris offices of satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo two days earlier.
Netanyahu on Sunday said he had agreed to a request from the families that the victims be buried in Jerusalem.
Valerie Barham, Phillipe’s wife said in an interview with Channel 2 Sunday that her husband would have wanted to be buried in Israel. “He would have wanted to be buried only there,” she said, before revealing that the two have a son who is buried in Israel. “He should be there with him.”
Members of Israel’s French-speaking community were also due to attend, as were many members of the general public. Police said free buses would be provided from a car park about two kilometres (1.25 miles) away while access to the site would be closed to private traffic.
The four bodies were released from the forensic institute in Paris on Monday and flown to Israel, where they arrived at Ben Gurion international Airport near Tel Aviv shortly after 4 a.m. (0200 GMT).
El Al Israel Airlines said the victims’ families were also travelling on the flight.
New testimony by one of Coulibaly’s hostages has revealed details of the hours of uncertainty and dredd experienced by the hostages in the kosher shop. It paints Coulibaly as calm, collected, boastful of the murders he committed and attention-hungry.
For many, the supermarket attack brought back memories of another deadly shooting in the southern French city of Toulouse in March 2012 when Islamist gunman Mohamed Merah shot dead three young children and a rabbi at a Jewish school.
All four were flown to Israel where they were buried in the same Jerusalem cemetery where the victims from the latest shooting will also be laid to rest.
The last decade has seen a series of high profile attacks on Jews in France. During the summer, a number of anti-Israel rallies turned violent, including one in which Jewish worshipers were trapped inside a synagogue.
The Toulouse shooting set off a wave of French immigration to Israel that has not stopped, with
numbers hitting a record high last year of 6,600 people.
And many believe the Paris slayings will only accelerate the trend.
Netanyahu has reached out to French Jews to relocate to Israel, telling them it was their “home.”
“To all the Jews of France, all the Jews of Europe, I would like to say that Israel is not just the place towards which you pray, the state of Israel is your home,” he said in remarks that were not well received in Paris.
Anxious to calm fears, Paris has pulled out all the stops to reassure the community, pledging to deploy nearly 5,000 police and security forces to protect the 700 Jewish schools across the country and to boost security at other Jewish institutions.
“France without its Jews is not France,” said Prime Minister Manuel Valls, standing outside the scene of Friday’s attack.
“The Jews of France, for several years, have been frightened,” he acknowledged.
“Today, we are all Charlie, all police officers, all the Jews of France,” he said, using the slogan of solidarity with all those killed in last week’s attacks.
The Times of Israel Community.