Kosher supermarket attack victims to be laid to rest in Israel
Ynet reporters/Published: 01.11.15/ Israel News
Yoav Hattab had just returned home from a visit to Israel, Yohan Cohen saved a 3-year-old when he fought the terrorist, Philippe Braham always wanted to make aliyah and Francois-Michel Saada lived for his family’s happiness; these are the four lives lost in the Friday attack.
The four hostages killed in the terror attack on a Paris kosher supermarket on Friday will be laid to rest on Tuesday in the Mount of Olives cemetery in Jerusalem, according to Robert Ejnes, the director of the CRIF, an umbrella organization of French Jewish communities, who is coordinating the transfer of the victims’ bodies to Israel.
The four victims are Yoav Hattab, 21, Yohan Cohen, 20, Philippe Braham, 45, and Francois-Michel Saada, 64.
“You took a part of me, I have no words to describe my sadness. I am destroyed for all of my life. All of our futures plans, all we had promised, how am I going to do this without you?” With those heartbreaking words, Sharon Seb said goodbye to her boyfriend Yohan Cohen, 20. Yohan had been working at the kosher supermarket for the past year and was killed early on in the attack, after the supermarket’s doors closed, his cousin Yonatan told Ynet.
“The police told the family the terrorist threatened to kill a three-year-old boy, and Yohan tried to stop it. He managed to grab the terrorist’s weapon but before Yohan had a chance to shoot him, the terrorist put a bullet in his head and killed him on the spot,” Yonatan said.
“My life was made for you, just for you. I’m speechless, I really cannot comprehend that I lost the love of my life. I can never recover,” girlfriend Sharon Seb wrote on her Facebook page. “You were so healthy, pure, perfect. I do not want to come to terms with the fact I have lost you. I do not know how I’m going to continue living without you, I do not know how to stand, how to have the strength to survive without you by my side.”
Seb said the two had been together for two years, and “had so many good years to share together. I do not understand, I still hope to
get a call in the morning telling me that it’s a mistake. I pray with all my heart it’s a mistake. 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. 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. We said, ‘in life or in death,’ and I will keep my promise. I would love to be near you, to join you.”
She thanked those who offered her support, but said it “still will not change anything, it will not lift my spirits.” Yohan’s cousin Yonatan told Ynet that Yohan, who celebrated his birthday in October, “studied economics and wanted to work in a bank.”Yohan’s parents immigrated to France from North Africa in the 60s – his father from Algeria and his mother from Tunisia – and settled in Sarcelles, near Paris.
Yohan, a rap fan, left behind two brothers and a sister. He visited Israel many times in the past. It was only a month ago that his maternal grandfather, famous Jewish-Tunisian singer Doukha (Mordechai Haddad), was buried in Netanya. Much like many others in France, Yohan posted #JeSuisCharlie on his Facebook page, to show his solidarity with the 12 victims of the first of the week’s terror attacks in the French capital.
Another cousin, Sharon Cohen, also took to Facebook to express her grief, “I hardly had time to open my eyes and I realized that you were no longer here. I still do not want to believe it, and yet I have no choice. Yohan, you were an example of kindness and goodness, you were the pride of your family and all your friends! And yesterday your life was torn away from you without scruples.
“01/09/2015 will forever burn in our hearts and we will avenge all those whose lives were torn off by the barbarians, I promise you!
“Yoyo, We love you more than anything and we’re all thinking about you.”
Philippe Braham was a father of four, his brother-in-law Shai Ben-David told Ynet, one child was from his first marriage and three from his second marriage to Ben-David’s sister, Valerie.
His first son with Valerie (he also has an older daughter) passed away three years ago. “This was an incomprehensible tragedy for my sister. She survived only thanks to his strength,” Ben-David said. Philippe was a computer engineer and recently worked as an insurance agent near the supermarket. He went shopping there before the Sabbath when the attack occurred.
An Observant Jew, Philippe attended the synagogue in Montrouge, a Parisian suburb. His brother is the rabbi of the synagogue in Pantin, another suburb of Paris.”He was a man who always wore a kippah, a Zionist whose dream was to make aliyah and he never made it. Every time he used to tell me, ‘God willing we’ll come, we’ll make aliyah soon.'”He loved Israel. He buried his parents and son here. He was an observant man who never harmed anyone. He visited Israel many times, the last time was several months ago to bury his mother. God avenge his blood,” he said.
“We want him to be buried in Israel. The prime minister called my sister an hour and a half ago and promised Philippe will receive a state funeral,” Ben-David added.
Refael Braham, Philippe’s 14-year-old son, was in Israel when he received the horrible news of his father’s murder.
“He was very close to his father and took it really hard,” said the head of the French aliyah project in the Netanya municipality. “He has been crying and refusing to believe he lost his father.”
“Dad went to the supermarket to shop for Shabbat. When I was with him (in France), we’d go shopping together quite often. If I hadn’t made aliyah to Israel, I might have gone with him this time as well and gotten hurt,” Refael said.
“Our son was saved from the attack,” Carol, Refael’s mother and Philippe’s ex-wife, said. “There’s hatred of Jews there, everyone needs to make aliyah to Israel. All Jews need to reach the conclusion Israel is better and safer for them. I came to Israel with my son and we feel safest here, we feel at home.”
On the decision to make aliyah, Carol said: “Refael visited Israel and wanted to stay, while I saw all of the mess in France – Muslims’ protested against Jews on our street and in our building.”
Carol and Refael came to Israel in September, and were hoping Philippe would follow them, but on Saturday evening they received the horrible news. “There’s no end in sight to the violence and hatred against Jews in France, we don’t know where it’s leading and what else could happen. People abroad need to know they’re in danger,” Carol said.
A relative of Yoav Hattab said he had just returned to Paris from a visit to Israel as part of the “Taglit-Birthright” project on Wednesday.
Hattab left behind six brothers and was living in Paris alone, where he was studying.
is father, Rabbi Benjamin Hattab, is a school headmaster in Tunisia, and a prominent figure in the Jewish community there. The elder Hattab gave an interview to Ynet four years ago during the rioting in Tunis, talking about how the 2,000 Jews in the country were dealing with the tense situation.
During Operation Protective Edge, Yoav had an argument on Facebook with a Muslim youth. “When you have nothing left in life, you go and blow up, and try to take as many people with you. It’s just revenge, and I would’ve done it as well,” the Muslim youth, Muhammad, wrote to Yoav. “For me it’s simple, Israel exists anyway so it’s better to live in peace, there are no other options,” Yoav replied, and posted the conversation on his Facebook page.
Francois-Michel Saada
Francois-Michel Saada, who was born in Tunis, was a pension fund manager. He was a father of two, with both of his children living in Israel.
“He led his life for the happiness of his family. A husband and an exemplary father,” one of his friends said.
**Roi Mendel, Omri Efraim, Tamar Nadav, Itamar Eichner, Rachel Cadars and AFP contributed to this report.
Kouachi brother die in suicidal attack on French siege force. Four hostages dead in Jewish Paris mini-market
DEBKAfile Special Report January 9, 2015
Four hostages whom Islamist gunman held Friday, Jan. 9 at a Jewish grocery store in Paris were reported dead by French police, shortly after they mounted a rescue operation that killed the gunman, Amedy Coulibaly, who earlier shot dead a policewoman. Other captives were set free. Minutes before, Said and Cherif Kouachi died in a shooting attack on the police siege force at a factory near Dammartin-en-Goelle, 40 km northeast of Paris. They were holed up there threatening to “die as martyrs” with their hostage.
Coulibaly and his partner Hayat Boumedienne had threatened to kill their hostages in Paris if the Kouachi brothers were not freed. Boumedienne, a female terrorist, is reported to have managed to get away. This is not confirmed.
And so the Islamist terror crisis kicked off in France by the murder of 12 people at the Charlie Hebdo magazine Wednesday reached a bloody conclusion – for now.
debkafile reported earlier Friday:
The two Charlie Hebdo terrorists were Friday, Jan. 9 holed up in a printing plant outside Dammartin-en-Goele northeast of Paris, with one or more hostages after a shootout with police. They were surrounded by hundreds of police backed by helicopters overhead. Negotiations for the release of hostages were met with the Islamist gunmen’s willingness to “die as martyrs” rather than surrender.
This was the first time Said and Cherif Kouachi were located nearly three days after they massacred 12 people at the magazine in Paris, despite a manhunt by 88,000 police officers, soldiers, security and intelligence personnel. .
The French authorities must admit to failure on two counts: Nabbing the two Islamic terrorists on the run and averting a string of terrorist attacks in Paris, in which three police officers paid with their lives – although the brothers, at least, were long known to French and Western anti-terror services as terror threats.
debkafile’s counterterrorism experts account for this apparent blindness by those agencies’ over-reliance on technology and double agents, instead of planting ears to the ground on the spot in the terrorists’ natural habitats.
Consequently, Western governments, including Washington, have become inured to admitting after major terrorist attacks in the last three years that the perpetrators’ identities and intentions were actually known in advance to their intelligence and anti-terror agencies. And even, in a few cases, double agents had been recruited and planted inside international Islamic terrorist organizations, including Al Qaeda.
Even so, when it came to the point, these known jihadis were never deterred from carrying out major terrorist crimes. This was demonstrated in a number of atrocities:
On April 15, 2013, the brothers Tamerlan Tsarnayev, 26, and Dzokhar Tsarnaev, 19, tried to blow up the Boston Marathon.
On May 22, in the same year, Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowalo performed an Islamist rite on the streets of London by decapitating the British serviceman Lee Rigby.
A year earlier, on March 2012, Mohammed Merah was responsible for two attacks: He murdered two French commandos in Montauban for France’s participation in the Afghan war, then slew the teacher and pupils of a Jewish school in Toulouse
On May 24, 2014, Mehdi Nemmouche, 29, from the North of France, was able to attack the Jewish Museum in Brussels and kill the Israeli couple, Miriam and Emanuel Riva, as well as a Frenchwoman and Belgian citizen. This was despite the fact that French intelligence had been keeping an eye on Nemmouche because of his association with groups of Islamists who fought in the Syrian war in 2013.
Friday, Jan. 9, the Kouachi brothers were found on the US no-fly list of Americans and foreigners who are barred from flying to the States because of specific security concerns. They were therefore familiar names to counterterrorist agencies when, two days earlier, they murdered 12 people at the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine in Paris, including the editor and top French cartoonists and two police officers.
Both had known records.
Cherif had spent time in a French prison in the early 20s for terrorist activities in connection with the recruitment of fighters in the Iraq War, while Said spent time in Yemen four years ago training with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).
Their bloody outrage in the heart of Paris did not fit the “lone wolf” or “lunatic” epithet attached to recent terror attacks in France, along with the argument that such actions are impossible to predict or thwart. This argument was heard after a string of attacks on a synagogue, a Jewish-owned printing plant and the mowing down of Christmas shoppers by a vehicle.
There was no question that this was a targeted multiple assassination that called for detailed planning and reconnaissance, as well as knowledge of the location of the editorial board room and the timetable of board meetings attended by the targeted journalists.
In terms of logistics, the perpetrators would have had to get hold of Kalachnikov assault rifles, ammunition belts, bullet-proof vests, gloves, balaclavas and masks, as well as a vehicle for arrival and getaway from the scene of the slaughter.
All these arrangements point to a complex, well-oiled support network, with experience in combat, terror, logistics, intelligence and communications.operations.
Nonetheless, neither the French DGSE (external security) nor the DGSI (internal security) got wind of the murderous conspiracy afoot against the satirical magazine, which was famous for its irreverent cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad as well as holy figures of other religions.
Their signal intelligence (SIGINT) should have at least picked up the chatter which usually precedes terrorist activity. However, this omen too may have escaped them because of incorrect or unfocused “tuning” to suspect communications sites.
French intelligence runs a network called Frenchelon (the counterpart of the US Echelon), which enjoys free rein and huge budgets and is capable of intercepting any voice, linear, cellular or computerized communications transmitted worldwide. This system operates aggressively from French embassies and other institutions in foreign countries, including Israel. Its overriding task is to forestall terrorist activity on French soil and abroad, and it works in partnership with the US FBI and the British MI6 and MI5.
The warning by MI5 domestic security chief, Andrew Parker, the day after the Charlie Hebdo massacre of a growing threat of “mass casualty attacks” was indeed timely. He said “intelligence pointed to the existence of specific plots.” But the UK official also admitted that although three terrorist plots had been foiled in recent months, “it was almost inevitable that one would eventually succeed.”
And therein lies the rub.
The failure of the mighty, many-branched Frenchelon to spot Said and Cherif Kouachi’s plans for the magazine massacre and locate them after the attack when they were on the loose were the symptomatic result of Western over-dependence on technical intelligence and waiver of human intelligence inside the Muslim communities of Paris, Europe and the United States. Anti-terror agencies are therefore short of real-time, tactical information on terror plots afoot – or even the states of mind current in those communities. Both are essential for pinning down violence before it erupts.
In consequence, the two terrorists, instead of being located by the army chasing them, broke cover first and staged the Dammartin-en-Goele hostage-stunt northeast of Paris. They said they are ready to die as martyrs rather than surrendering, so that they can go down in a cloud of Islamist glory.
