Thousands attend ceremony for men killed last week, who have been awarded the Légion d’honneur Interactive: the victims of the Paris terror attacks

The four French Jewish victims of last week’s deadly attack on a kosher Paris supermarket have been buried in Jerusalem in a funeral attended by thousands of members of Israel’s French community.

The mourning for Yoav Hattab, 21, Yohan Cohen, 20, Philippe Braham, 40, and Francois-Michel Saada, 64, was led by family members and by Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, and president, Reuven Rivlin.

France was represented by Ségolène Royal, the ecology minister, who announced that President François Hollande had conferred the country’s highest civilian award, the Légion d’honneur, on the four men.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mourners march in Jerusalem before the funeral of four Jews killed in a kosher supermarket in Paris last week. Photograph: Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images

The four were among 17 people killed in three days of attacks last week by terrorists claiming allegiance to al-Qaida and the Islamic State (Isis) extremist groups.

The El Al flight carrying the coffins of the victims arrived at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport at 4am before the bodies were taken in a convoy of ambulances and other vehicles donated by the French community in Israel to the large cemetery at Givat Shaul on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

The funeral took place on the same day as a ceremony in Paris at which the French president, François Hollande, led tributes to the three police officers killed during last week’s attack.

A coffin containing the body of one of the victims of the kosher supermarket attack arrives at Ben Gurion airport. Photograph: handout/Reuters

As the ceremony began in the Har HaMenuchot cemetery, members of the four victims’ families stood by the coffins to recite Kaddish – the prayer for the dead – and lit torches as a quiet and solemn crowd that stretched back from the cemetery up the adjoining hill bowed their heads.

Yonatan Saada said his father had long wanted to move to Israel.

“François-Michel was someone really generous that all his life he put his wife, his children, his friends before himself. He was in love with Israel, he wanted to live here,” he said, his voice breaking. “But he’s here now.”

Valerie Braham paid tribute to her husband, Philippe. “[He was] a man who thought of others before himself, a great husband and father who lived for his children. I’m crying, but I know that you’re all crying with me.”

One of Yohan Cohen’s uncles praised his nephew’s courage during the attack: “When he stood face to face with terrorism, he did not hesitate to demonstrate courage and protected his co-workers and the customers of the store with his life,” he said. “Yohan left us too soon.”

The mourners, many of whom travelled from French-speaking communities across the country, represented all walks of life of the French community in Israel including young army conscripts, orthodox religious students, company directors, students, journalists and retirees.

Some embraced each other, weeping, while others carried placards that read: “Dead because I am a Jew”. Friends of Yohan Cohen wore T-shirts with his picture and the words “Rest in peace”.

Leading the eulogies, Rivlin said: “Regardless of what may be the sick motives of terrorists, it is beholden upon the leaders of Europe to act, and commit to firm measures to return a sense of security and safety to the Jews of Europe; in Toulouse, in Paris, in Brussels, or in Burgas [in Bulgaria].

“We cannot allow it to be the case, 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 with skullcaps and tzitzit [the fringed garment an orthodox man wears].”

Rivlin, though, insisted that Jews should not return to their ancestral home out of distress or fear of violence. “The land of Israel is the land of choice. We want you to choose Israel, because of a love for Israel,” he said.

Mourners in Jerusalem. Photograph: JACK GUEZ/AFP/Getty Images

Netanyahu – who told France’s Jews at the weekend that Israel would welcome them with open arms – was next to speak. “I think that most [world leaders] understand – or are at least starting to understand – that this terror committed by extremist Islam represents a clear and present threat to peace in the world in which we live.

“Islamist terror... is not just the enemy of the Jewish people but of all humanity. It is time all people of all cultures united to eject these elements from among us.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ségolène Royal shakes hands with Binyamin Netanyahu at the end of the funeral. Photograph: Jim Hollander/AFP/Getty Images

Reiterating his message of the weekend, he said: “I believe that [Jews] know deep in their hearts that they have one country, the state of Israel, that is their historic homeland and will always welcome them with open arms.”

Conferring the Légion d’honneur on the four dead men, Royal insisted that the French Republic’s values were not just about Voltaire – whose name has been much invoked after the Charlie Hebdo killings – but also about Emile Zola as well, the novelist who spoke in defence of the Jewish army captain Alfred Dreyfus in the Dreyfus Affair.

“All four were killed because they were Jews,” she said of the victims. “Today our thoughts are for you, your pain is our pain. Your pain is the pain of the whole of France that cries over your children with you.”

Among those attending the funeral was journalist David Gombin, from Israel’s i24, who emigrated eight years ago from Provence, France.

“It is a sad day for Israel and for Jews worldwide,” he said. “I hope what has happened in Paris will change people’s understanding of how we fight racism and antisemitism.

The killings shocked France’s 500,000 strong Jewish community, the largest in Europe, and prompted calls from Netanyahu for Jews throughout the continent to move to Israel to ensure their safety amid a wave of antisemitism.

For many, the supermarket attack brought back memories of another deadly shooting, in the southern French city of Toulouse in March 2012, when an Islamist gunman, Mohamed Merah, shot dead three young children and a teacher at a Jewish school.

Last year, France topped Israel’s immigration list, according to the Jewish Agency, a nonprofit group that works closely with the government and acts as a link between Jews around the world. Nearly 7,000 immigrants came to Israel in 2014, double the number from the previous year.

The French Jewish victims of the Paris supermarket attack

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Clockwise from top left: Yohan Cohen, Philippe Braham, Francois-Michel Saada and Yoav Hattab. Photograph: DSK/AFP/Getty Images

Yoav Hattab

The youngest of the Kosher supermarket victims, Hattab was described by friends as a hardworking student who always had a smile on his face.

Hattab, 21, was completing his studies in Paris and worshipped at a synagogue every week. He was the son of chief rabbi Benjamin Hattab of Tunis, and had grown up in La Goulette, a coastal town in the suburbs of Tunis. He returned frequently to visit his family.

Young Tunisians on social media have been sharing a television interview in which the rabbi speaks passionately of the easy, mutually respectful relationship between Jews and Muslims in Tunisia. In contrast, Hattab’s father says that the atmosphere in Paris felt so hostile towards Jews. The rabbi says his son called him to apologise for being unwilling to run the risk of wearing his yarmulke (skullcap) in public.

The headline on the front page of Le Temps, a French-language newspaper based in Tunis, read “Tunisia is bereaved”. In the accompanying photo, Hattab holds up a blue-inked index finger proudly – to show that he had voted in his country’s first democratic election following the 2011 revolution.

A relative told Israeli media that Hattab had just returned to Paris from Israel as part of a Birthright project, which is a free tour to Israel offered to young diaspora Jews around the world. A friend of Hattab said his ultimate aim was to move to Israel, even though the Birthright trip was his first time in the country. He came from a family of seven children.

Phillipe Braham

The 40-year-old father of four worked at an insurance firm near the kosher supermarket where he was shot dead by Amédy Coulibaly. He was shopping for groceries for the sabbath when the attack began on Friday. He worshipped at a synagogue in Montrouge, in the southern suburbs of Paris, according to French news reports.

His 14-year-old son, Refael Braham, was reportedly in Israel when he received the news of his father’s death. Braham lived with his wife, Valerie, in a small town called L’Haÿ-les-Roses, five miles south-west from the centre of Paris.

He was a devout Jew and his brother-in-law, Shai Ben-David, told Israeli media that Braham’s “dream was to make aliyah [move to Israel] – and he never made it”. Ben-David added: “He loved Israel. He buried his parents and son there. He was an observant man who never harmed anyone.” Friends described him as “someone dedicated, always ready to help others”.

Yohan Cohen

Cohen, 20, had worked at Hyper Cacher for a year to save up for his planned wedding to his girlfriend, Sharon Seb. He is believed to have been the first victim of the siege at the kosher supermarket. Yohan had tried to stop a three-year-old being shot by the terrorist, according to Israeli news reports.

Cohen, an economics student and fan of rap music, had ambitions to work in a bank. Israeli media reported that his parents were from Algeria and settled in Sarcelles, France, in the 1960s. He was a grandson of a Jewish-Tunisian singer, Doukha, who died in December.

In a tribute on Facebook, Seb described Cohen as, “so healthy, pure, perfect”. She said they had been together for two years. She wrote: “I really cannot live without you, it’s impossible. I lost the will to live without you, I do not want anything anymore, because all of my plans were with you, not with anyone else.” She added, “I feel empty. Come back to me. I love you with all of my heart and all of my strength, and no one can separate me from you.”

His cousin, Sharon Cohen, said on social media that “Yoyo” – as he was known – was “an example of kindness and goodness”. She added: “You were the pride of your family and all your friends!” He leaves behind two brothers and a sister.

François-Michel Saada

The Tunisian-born retired father of two, 64, was described by friends as an, “exemplary husband and father”. Both his adult children live in Israel and he leaves his wife of 30 years, a psychomotor therapist.