PM visits families of Toulouse shooting victims

Netanyahu tells murdered 8-year-old's family, “If they could have, these murderers would have murdered every Jew.”

By JPOST.COM STAFF
PM on condolence visit (photo credit: Courtesy PMO)
PM on condolence visit
(photo credit: Courtesy PMO)
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Thursday paid condolence calls to the families of the Jewish school shooting in Toulouse. He was accompanied on the visit by French Ambassador to Israel Christophe Bigot.
During the meeting with Miriam Monsonego's parents and siblings, the prime minister said, “If they could have, these murderers would have murdered every Jew.”
He added, “To think about little Miriam, who was murdered so brutally, this is awful. Bereavement is like disability; it is painful and debilitating, like a limb of one’s body has been cut off.  We all pray that you will find the strength to deal with your pain.”  
Netanyahu also proposed to Miriam’s father, a school principal, that the school be renamed after the victims.
At his meeting with Ava Sandler, who lost her husband and two children in the shootings, Netanyahu said, “Anywhere a Jew goes, these murderers regard it as occupied territory. The State of Israel was established to be a shield for the Jewish People.”
The prime minister told her that the State of Israel would do everything it could to assist her.
The victims, accompanied by French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé, were flown by France to Israel and buried in Jerusalem on Wednesday.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, Interior Minister Eli Yishai, Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin, dignitaries and a large number of mourners attended the funeral.