TEL AVIV – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli President Reuven Rivlin sent their condolences to Paris on Monday night after a fire engulfed the Notre-Dame Cathedral.
“I deeply regret the fire at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris,” Netanyahu said. “It is a heritage site for the culture and religion of France and humanity as a whole. We look forward to the success of the firefighting efforts.”
Writing in French, President Reuven Rivlin also expressed solidarity with France.
“The Notre-Dame is one of the most beautiful symbols of Paris in particular and France in general, but also one of the most important to any civilized person,” he wrote. “Last January I looked at the Paris skyline, which the cathedral’s turret made even more beautiful. Our hearts are with the citizens of France and to the legends of the Notre-Dame, real and fictional ones.”
Macron launched a fundraising campaign to raise money to rebuild the famed cathedral.
“Notre-Dame is our history, our literature, part of our psyche, the place of all our great events, our epidemics, our wars, our liberations, the epicenter of our lives,” Macron said Monday evening.
“Notre-Dame is burning, and I know the sadness, and this tremor felt by so many fellow French people. But tonight, I’d like to speak of hope too,” he said. “Let’s be proud, because we built this cathedral more than 800 years ago, we’ve built it and, throughout the centuries, let it grow and improved it. So I solemnly say tonight: we will rebuild it together.”
As of Tuesday afternoon, $680 million had been pledged from French corporations and private families AFP reported, with $226 million of that coming from French cosmetics giant L’Oreal and its founding Bettencourt family.