Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, told French and European Jews they would be welcomed with “open arms” if they chose to emigrate to Israel.

His statement was issued on Sunday before he left for Paris for a march in solidarity with victims of last week’s killings – including four French Jews murdered in a kosher supermarket.

Similar calls were also made by defence minister Moshe Ya’alon, former finance minister Yair Lapid and foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman. Lieberman also attended the Paris rally, as did the economy minister, Naftali Bennett.

Netanyahu’s remarks came as his office announced that the bodies of the four French Jews killed in the HyperCacher supermarket on Friday – Yoav Hattab, 21, Yohan Cohen, 20, Philippe Braham, 45 and Francois-Michel Saada, 64 – would be flown to Israel for funerals on Tuesday.

Netanyahu was due to visit Paris’s grand synagogue after the rally with the French president, François Hollande, and meet Jewish leaders.

The Israeli prime minister’s appeal, however, was quickly criticised by the head of the European Jewish Association, Rabbi Menachem Margolin, who said that it risked “severely weakening and damaging the Jewish communities that have the right to live securely wherever they are”.

Former Israel justice minster Tzipi Livni, who is running against Netanyahu in elections on 17 March, was also critical, telling secondary school students during a meeting on Sunday that Jews should come to Israel because they are “Zionists” and “not because it is a safe haven” adding that the call would not increase the safety of European Jews.

About half a million Jews live in France, making it the second largest diaspora population after the US. In the last few years, however, the number of French Jews emigrating to Israel has jumped sharply. Last year some 7,000 made aliyah to Israel, with some estimates that number could double this year.

Netanyahu’s comments followed remarks by the French prime minister, Manuel Valls, who has declared that a mass departure of French Jews should be regarded as a failure for France.

“If 100,000 Jews leave, France will no longer be France. The French Republic will be judged a failure,” he said. “The Jews of France are profoundly attached to France but they need reassurance that they are welcome here, that they are secure here.”

The rally in Paris came as more details emerged of the four Jewish victims of the attack on the HyperCacher supermarket.

Yohan Cohen had worked in the supermarket for a year. His cousin Yonatan told the Israeli website Ynet that Cohen had been killed early in the attack trying to protect a three-year-old boy.

“The police told the family the terrorist threatened to kill a three-year-old boy, and Yohan tried to stop it. He managed to grab the terrorist’s weapon but before Yohan had a chance to shoot him, the terrorist put a bullet in his head and killed him on the spot,” Yonatan said.

Yoav Hattab was also killed trying to intervene, reportedly grabbing one of two weapons held by Amedy Coulibaly.

The events in France have gripped Israeli media and politics, with many commentators arguing that Europe had failed to understand the nature of the global threat from Islamic extremism.

Commentary in the main Israeli newspapers has been largely harshly critical of Europe, and European policies on militant jihadis, since Friday’s attack.

Writing in Maariv Alon, Ben David predicted: “Today, European leaders will gather together with tens of thousands of people in Paris, will make more empty declarations, and maybe even sing Kumbaya – and then go back to their normal routine. Meanwhile, Europe continues to slumber as it encounters jihad.

“The terrorists, who selected a patently Jewish target after the attack on the newspaper, also made it easy for the French to tell themselves Europe’s favourite narrative: that every act of Islamic terror stems from the Israeli-Arab conflict.”

Last week’s attacks were strongly condemned by leading Palestinian figures, among them the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, who telephoned Hollande to express his outrage. “This terrorism has no religion,” he told the French president, expressing his opposition to any “terror attack” that hurts innocent citizens regardless of their race or religion. “Human life is sacred and God has created us all,” he added.” Abbas also attended Sunday’s rally in Paris.