Israel reacts with anger, grief and sorrow

  • Israel
(From left: Gabriel Sandler, Jonathan Sandler, Aryeh Sander killed yesterday. Survived by his wife and their baby. Credit: Flash90

Jerusalem will be the burial place for the victims of the shooting in Toulouse. Their funerals are scheduled to take place tomorrow morning.

But in Israel reaction hasn't been confined to expressions of shock, sorrow and anger. There is an intensely political dimension too.

As news of the killings broke, many a first thought would have been: is Iran behind this?

After all, Israel blames Tehran for bomb plots against Israeli targets in India, Georgia and Bangkok; revenge for the assassination of a number of Iranian nuclear scientists.

But it seems the culprit is likely to be gunman with a race-hatred not confined to Jews.

As the news broke many in Israel thought Iran were behind the shootings. Credit: Press Association

Still Israel's Prime Minister managed to use a statement condemning the killings to berate the United Nations Human Rights Council for meeting a representative of Hamas. He said:

Today, Israel's uncompromising Foreign Minister Avigor Lieberman lets loose at the EU Foreign Policy chief Catherine Ashton.

Her error? To compare the Toulouse killings to:

Mr Lieberman called her words "inappropriate. I hope that Ashton reexamines and retracts them." He continued:

8-year-old Miriam Monsenego, daughter of the school headmaster, killed yesterday morning at the Ozar Hatorah School in Toulouse. Credit: Flash90

Amid all that, it is perhaps easy to forget that to those grieving, the circumstances of a child's death are secondary to the enormity of the loss itself.

I talked to the uncle of Miriam Monsonego, the 7-year-old shot three times as she tried in vain to flee the Toulouse gunman.

He spoke with great dignity, he said.