Former Israeli President Shimon Peres seemed to repudiate Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s call for embattled European Jews to move en masse to Israel.

“Come because you want to live in Israel,” Peres said Feb. 15 in New York. “Jews can live all over the world. Just keep your children Jewish.”

Peres did not specifically cite Netanyahu, who reiterated his call for Jews in Europe to immigrate to Israel after a Feb. 15 synagogue shooting in Copenhagen left a Jewish volunteer security guard dead. Netanyahu made a similar call after the attack in January at a kosher supermarket in Paris, where four Jews were killed two days after the deadly Charlie Hebdo assault.

“We are preparing and calling for the absorption of mass immigration from Europe,” Netanyahu said after the Copenhagen attack. “I would like to tell all European Jews and all Jews wherever they are: Israel is the home of every Jew.”

Peres made his remarks in a discussion with Times of Israel editor David Horovitz at the publication’s gala at Manhattan’s Waldorf Astoria. — jta