Jewish Agency recognizes terror victims outside of Israel

Marcy Oster

JERUSALEM (JTA) — The Jewish Agency for Israel memorialized the victims of anti-Semitic attacks outside of Israel during a ceremony in Jerusalem on Israel’s Memorial Day.

Wednesday’s memorial focused on the victims of the terror attack on the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket in Paris in which four Jewish men were killed, and an attack on a Copenhagen synagogue which left a volunteer security guard dead.

Family members of the victims of the two attacks attended the ceremony at the Jerusalem headquarters of the Jewish Agency.

“We have discovered that the battlefield is not on the borders of Israel, but in every Israeli city, and we furthermore discovered, once again, that the battlefield is not only on Israeli soil, but in every Jewish school and synagogue, and even in kosher supermarkets around the world,” Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky said during the ceremony.

“What protects us in Israel is conventional weapons: the power of the Israeli army. In the Diaspora, what protects us is an unconventional weapon: the solidarity of the Jewish people,” he said.

Islamist Amedy Coulibaly on Jan. 9 killed his Jewish victims at the Hyper Cacher market on the eastern edge of Paris during a day-long siege and standoff with police. On Feb. 14, volunteer Jewish security guard, Dan Uzan, was shot and killed there by a lone Islamist gunman outside the central Copenhagen shul, or Krystalgade Synagogue.

“My husband Phillipe was taken from me and from our children in the terrorist attack at Hyper Cacher in France. He was murdered for one reason: because he is a Jew,” said Valérie Braham, widow of Philippe Braham. “The great hatred for the Jewish people entered my home and destroyed my family. It also touches every home and family in the Jewish people. Today we all feel the same pain.”