News

Funeral Held for Toulouse Victims

Image by getty images

By Haaretz March 21, 2012

Anguish in Israel: Grief-stricken crowds mourn the deaths of the victims of the Toulouse shooting rampage at their funeral in Jerusalem. Image by getty images

Thousands of mourners arrived at the Har HaMenuchot cemetery in Jerusalem on Wednesday morning to attend the funeral of the four victims in the shooting at a Jewish School in Toulouse, southwest France, earlier this week.

In attendance were French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai, Justice Minister Yaakov Ne’eman and Religious Services Minister Yaakov Margi, as well as deputy health minister Yaakov Litzman.

Juppe met with President Shimon Peres before the funeral started. “I came to show the French people’s solidarity with the Israeli people, who feel like their children have been murdered,” he said after the meeting.

“I thank you for being sympathetic with us such a hard day,” said Peres to Juppe.

“This is a unique expression of the deep relations between France and Israel. Your arrival and the actions of President Sarkozy during these difficult events prove that Israel and France are on the same front in search of peace and all-out war against terrorism,” Peres said.

“You can be confident: France is doing everything and will do everything so that there will be full safety in schools and synagogues, so that a criminal act such as this will never happen again,” Juppe said at the ceremony.

Juppe said at the end of his eulogy, “May their souls be bound in the bond of life.”

Parliament speaker Reuben Rivlin said in his eulogy at the that the attack was inspired by “wild animals with hatred in their hearts.”

For more, go to Haaretz.com

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO