Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, told French and European Jews they would be welcomed with “open arms” if they chose to emigrate to Israel.
His statement was issued on Sunday before he left for Paris for a march in solidarity with victims of last week’s killings – including four French Jews murdered in a kosher supermarket.
Similar calls were also made by defence minister Moshe Ya’alon, former finance minister Yair Lapid and foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman. Lieberman also attended the Paris rally, as did the economy minister, Naftali Bennett.
Netanyahu’s remarks came as his office announced that the bodies of the four French Jews killed in the HyperCacher supermarket on Friday – Yoav Hattab, 21, Yohan Cohen, 20, Philippe Braham, 45 and Francois-Michel Saada, 64 – would be flown to Israel for funerals on Tuesday.
Netanyahu was due to visit Paris’s grand synagogue after the rally with the French president, François Hollande, and meet Jewish leaders.
The Israeli prime minister’s appeal, however, was quickly criticised by the head of the European Jewish Association, Rabbi Menachem Margolin, who said that it risked “severely weakening and damaging the Jewish communities that have the right to live securely wherever they are”.
Credit to The Guardian
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