Israel lays to rest 4 victims of Paris supermarket attack

Israeli leaders and multitude of mourners gathered Tuesday with the families of four Jewish victims of last week's terror attack on a Paris kosher supermarket for a solemn funeral ceremony at a Jerusalem cemetery.

Yoav Hattab, Yohan Cohen, Philippe Braham and Francois-Michel Saada, were gunned down on Friday during a hostage attack on "Hyper Casher" supermarket in eastern Paris. They were among 17 victims killed last week in Paris amid a string of terror attacks, including an assault on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

The coffins of the four Jewish French citizens arrived in Israel on a pre-dawn flight from France, following a request by their families to bury them in Israel.

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attended the rite, and French Ecology Minister Segolene Royal arrived in Israel to represent her country.

"I stand before you, brokenhearted, shaken and in pain, and with me stands an entire nation," Rivlin eulogized the victims with a quivering voice.

The attack at a kosher grocery store was "explicitly targeting the Jewish community," Rivlin said, stressing that it cannot be allowed that Jews are again afraid to walk in the streets of Europe 70 years after the Nazi Holocaust.

He called on European leaders to "commit to firm measures" against anti-Semitism in order to return a sense of safety to the Jews of Europe.

Netanyahu reiterated his stance against Islamic extremists and called on the Jews in France to immigrate to Israel.

"It's about time that all of the civilized world unite and uproot these enemies from our midst... and for Jews to return to their historic birthplace," Netanyahu said, using a common Zionist term which considers Israel as the historic homeland of the Jewish people.

According to 1950's Law of Return, Jews worldwide can immigrate to Israel without any restrictions.

However, Netanyahu's calls for massive immigration out of France were unwelcomed by some French leaders.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls told the Atlantic magazine "the Jews of France are profoundly attached to France but they need reassurance that they are welcome here, that they are secure here."

On Monday, France announced it was deploying almost 5,000 policemen to guard Jewish schools and synagogues.

The beefed up security was aimed to allay fears among the 500,000 French Jews, the largest Jewish community in Europe.

According to the Jewish Agency, a quasi-governmental body in charge of Jewish immigration to Israel, hundreds of Jews attended an information fair in Paris on Sunday, amid expectations of a fresh wave of French immigrants to Israel.

Hattab, a 21-year-old immigrant from Tunisia, was a business student in Paris. He died trying to grab one of the weapons of Amedy Coulibaly, an Islamic State (IS) loyalist, according to French media.

Cohen, 22, who had worked at the Hyper Cacher, was reportedly killed as he attempted to stop Coulibaly from killing a three-year-old baby.

Braham, 45, a computer engineer, was the brother of the rabbi of Parisian suburb synagogue. He is survived by his wife and four children, according to Israel's Jerusalem Post.

Saada, 64, a pensioner, was buying groceries for the Sabbath dinner. He was a father of two children, both living in Israel, the Jerusalem Post said. Endit