Charlie Burials: ‘We Can Now Die for Being Jewish’

By Chris Mitchell and Julie Stahl

CBN News Middle East Bureau

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

JERUSALEM, Israel -- The State of Israel honored and buried the four French Jews killed in last week's Islamic terror attack in Paris.

Israel's leaders, including the prime minister, the president and the mayor of Jerusalem, paid their respects to the family and friends of the victims during a state funeral at the Har Hamenuchot Cemetery in Jerusalem's Givat Shaul neighborhood.

"This is not how we wanted you to come to Israel," Israeli President Reuven Rivlin said in his eulogy. "This is not how we wanted you to come home to Israel and its capital, Jerusalem. We wanted you alive, we wanted you alive."

During the funeral service, one rabbi read from Psalm 130: "Out of the depths I cry to you O Lord."

It reflected the feeling of many who came to honor the four French Jews who lost their lives while shopping at a kosher supermarket in the French capital.

"There is no word. There is no word. I can't tell you anything. I'm just feeling pain and there's no word," an Israeli named Amy, who immigrated from France five years ago, told CBN News.

The Women's International Zionist Organization (WIZO) reported rising anti-Semitism in France and around the world.

"We saw now that we can die because we are Jewish in France and this feeling is really [a] bad feeling. We are really sad for all the Jewish community," a French Jewess named Eden said. She said she wants to immigrate to Israel soon.

Many believe last week's terror attacks will accelerate the immigration, known in Hebrew as "aliyah," of French Jews to Israel.

"I hope every Jew around the world can see the difference between what life is like in the protection or the embrace that they feel in a country that is not promised to them -- or traditionally where they fell after the exile of the Jewish people, experienced time and time again for thousands of years, being pushed out of our land," an Israeli named Shira, who immigrated from America, told CBNNews.

"And indeed this [Israel] is our homeland and as much as we can fear the rockets and the random acts of terror, it's the most safe place because we know we are protected by the government, we are protected by each other and 'am Yisrael chai [the people of Israel live]!

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the land of Israel, the one Jewish state, is the only true hope of the Jewish people. He is calling for the Jews of France and the world to come home.