JERUSALEM — Israel’s leaders on Tuesday strongly censured the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, for remarks made a day earlier in which she was perceived as having equated the killing of three children at a Jewish school in France with the death of children during the fighting in Gaza.

Speaking at a conference on Palestinian refugees in Brussels on Monday, hours after the attack in Toulouse, France, Ms. Ashton spoke of remembering “young people who have been killed in all sorts of terrible circumstances.”

In the transcript of her comments released by the European Union, she continues: “The Belgian children having lost their lives in a terrible tragedy, and when we think of what happened in Toulouse today, when we remember what happened in Norway a year ago, when we know what is happening in Syria, when we see what is happening in Gaza and in different parts of the world — we remember young people and children who lose their lives.”

A recording of her comments and a transcript later released by Ms. Ashton’s office show slightly different wording and include a reference to children in Sderot, Israel, a target for rockets fired from Gaza. She finishes by saying, “When we see what is happening in Gaza and Sderot, in different parts of the world — we remember young people and children who lose their lives.”