COPENHAGEN: Danish Jews on Monday turned down an offer by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to emigrate to Israel following a deadly weekend attack on a synagogue in Copenhagen.

“We’re very grateful for Netanyahu’s concern but having said that, we are Danish — we’re Danish Jews but we’re Danish — and it won’t be terror that makes us go to Israel,” said a spokesman for the Jewish Community in Denmark, Jeppe Juhl.

“So we understand his concern for our well-being, and we value his concern but we are Danish and we’re staying in Denmark. If we move to Israel it’s for other reasons,” he told AFP.

Netanyahu on Sunday urged European Jews to move to Israel after a Jewish man was killed outside Copenhagen’s main synagogue in one of two attacks in the city at the weekend.

“Israel is your home. We are preparing and calling for the absorption of mass immigration from Europe,” Netanyahu said in a statement, repeating a similar call after attacks by jihadis in Paris last month that killed 17 people including four Jews.

Germany said Monday it wants Jews to stay and promised to ensure their security following the Danish attack.

Chancellor Angela Merkel said Germany was “glad and also grateful” to have a Jewish community, when asked about Netanyahu’s appeal.

The German government and other officials will do everything possible to ensure the safety of Jewish institutions and citizens in Germany, Merkel told reporters after Sunday’s election in the northern city-state of Hamburg.

“We’d like to go on living well together with the Jews who are in Germany today,” the chancellor added.

A German foreign ministry spokeswoman had a similar message, saying “We want to do everything so that Jews stay here in Germany and so that they feel well and safe.”

French President Francois Hollande said on Monday that Jews were welcome in Europe and France, in an apparent retort to Netanyahu.

Jews “have their place in Europe and in particular in France,” Hollande said, in reference also to the vandalizing of several hundred tombs at a Jewish cemetery in the east of the country over the weekend.

Authorities said Sunday that 300 Jewish tombs had been defaced in the village of Montry, northeast France late Sunday, although nothing was reported written on them.