Israel Mourns Toulouse Shooting Victims As Funeral Begins In Jerusalem; France Expresses Solidarity

All of Israel mourned as three little children and a Rabbi killed in the Toulouse shooting were laid to rest in Givat Shaul, Israel. The funeral ceremony that began 10 a.m. local time at Givat Shaul's Har Hamenuchot cemetery in Jerusalem was telecast live by the state television.

The Jewish victims which included three schoolchildren and a rabbi where killed brutally by al-Qaida linked suspects at a Jewish school in Toulouse, southwest France, earlier this week.

According to the French police, the suspects are holed up in a house in Toulouse, where they are negotiating a surrender deal with the police. The prime suspect says that he will surrender Wednesday afternoon, according to the latest media reports.

Public outrage mounted against the French suspects in Israel as the coffins of the victims arrived in Jerusalem. The funeral ceremony followed a funeral procession in which thousands of Israelis participated.

The remains of the teacher and his two young sons were wrapped in a white prayer shawl, while that of the seven-year-old girl was wrapped in a blue shroud embroidered with gold. Many in the crowd wept quietly as a rabbi read from the Book of Psalms, as the distraught parents were supported by friends and family, AFP reported.

The bodies of four victims, Rabbi Yonatan Sandler, his two children, six-year-old Aryeh, three-year-old Gavriel and eight-year-old Miriam Monsonego, were brought to Israel in a French military plane, Wednesday morning. French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe represented the French government in expressing the nation's solidarity with the victims and family at the funeral.

The report that one of the murder suspects has confided to the police that the killings were to avenge the deaths of Palestinian children in the ongoing Middle East crisis has only worsened the public outcry.

Anyone looking to justify hate must know that hate is senseless. The murder of the school children in Toulouse was senseless, as was the massacre of infants in Itamar, Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin said Wednesday morning at the funeral ceremony, Jerusalem Post reported.