The bodies of the four French Jews killed last Friday in a terror attack by an Islamist jihadist on a kosher supermarket in Paris arrived early Tuesday in Israel were they will be buried 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 Hyper Cacher 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. (11 am in Paris).
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin , Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and opposition leader Isaac Herzog will attend the funeral, along with other Israeli ministers and officials.
French Minister for Ecology, Ségolène Royal, will represent France.
On Monday, before returning to Israel from Paris, Benjamin Netanyahu visited the Hyper Cacher store at the porte de Vincennes where the four Jews were killed and said he expects the world leaders who marched against terrorism in the streets of Paris on Sunday to fight terror "even when it is directed at Israel and the Jews." "There is a direct line between the attacks of the Islamic extremists around the world and the attack here at the kosher grocery at the center of Paris," Netanyahu, who was accompanied by Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, said.
On Sunday, in a speech at the Great Synagogue in Paris, Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu praised Lassana Bathily, the Muslim employee of the kosher supermarket who saved the lives of several customers by helping them hide from the hostage taker Amedy Coulibaly.