BICOM

The four Jewish men killed in a terror attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris on Friday will be laid to rest today at a cemetery in Jerusalem, in accordance with the wishes of their families.

Yoav Hattab, Philippe Braham, Yohan Cohen and Francois-Michel Saada were gunned down by an Islamist gunman two days after the massacre at the offices of satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo. Yohan Cohen, 22, was an employee of the supermarket; Yoav Hattab, 21, was a student and the son of the chief rabbi of Tunis; Phillipe Barham, 45, was an executive at an IT company, a father of four and François-Michel Saada, 64, was a retired father of two.

The four will be buried in a joint ceremony at around midday at the Har Hamenuhot cemetery in Jerusalem, which is also the resting place of three children and a rabbi who were killed in an Islamist terror attack on a Jewish school in Toulouse in March 2012. The attacks have contributed significantly to a sense of anxiety and fear among French Jews, with emigration to Israel reaching a record high in 2014.

Today’s funeral will be attended by Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Opposition Leader Isaac Herzog. The French government will be represented by Ségolène Royal, a former Presidential candidate and current Minister of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy. The four bodies arrived at Ben Gurion International Airport at around 4am. Police said that access to the cemetery will be closed to private traffic but that free public busses will be provided from nearby. A large public attendance is expected.

Netanyahu yesterday visited the site of Friday’s attack in Paris alongside Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, where a brief ceremony was held. Netanyahu attended Sunday’s mass solidarity rally in Paris and is quoted by Maariv this morning saying, “What the world saw was significant—the Israeli prime minister marching with the world leaders in a unified effort against terrorism.”