Jews safer here than Europe: Israel

Jerusalem, Jan 13 (IANS/EFE) Israel Tuesday said Jews were afraid "to walk in the streets of Europe" and that they can enjoy complete security in their "natural homeland".

"I believe that Jews know deep in their hearts that they have one country -- the state of Israel, the historic birthplace that will accept them with open arms. Now more than ever Israel is the real, genuine home for all of us," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the funeral in Jerusalem of four Jewish people killed last week in an attack on a Paris supermarket.

Netanyahu was joined by Israeli President Reuven Rivlin and noted that the four victims were killed in a manner that recalls those who died at a school in Toulouse three years ago just because they were Jews.

Rivlin said that "in the year 2015, 70 years since the end of the Second World War, Jews are afraid to walk in the streets of Europe".

"However, returning to your ancestral home need not be due to distress, out of desperation, because of destruction, or in the throes of terror and fear. The land of Israel is the land of choice. We want you to choose Israel, because of a love for Israel," the Israeli president stressed.

"It's about time that all of the civilized world unite and uproot these enemies from our midst," Netanyahu said during the burial at the Givat Shaul cemetery.

The four victims were killed last Friday by Amedy Coulibaly, a terrorist who took more than a dozen hostages in a Jewish supermarket and killed four of them before policemen shot him dead.

The bodies of the victims, Yoram Cohen, Philippe Barham, Yoav Hatab and Francois Michel Saada, accompanied by their families, had landed at Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv Tuesday morning.

--IANS/EFE

vr/bg