19-May-13: In France, they prefer their terrorists to be of the 'lone wolf' kind, irrespective of the facts

Mohamed Merah, the one-man murdering band whose accomplices
keep getting discovered [Image Source]

Keep in mind the murder spree carried out in Toulouse, France, during March 2012 by Mohamed Merah, a 23-year-old French-Algerian Islamist terrorist and (until his brief and bloody moment of infamy) a petty criminal. 

He attacked and killed several French Army personnel, blaming it on the war in Afghanistan. Then at 8 in the morning on March 19, 2012, he rode up to the gates of the Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse, part of a national chain of about 20 French Jewish schools:

He dismounted, and immediately opened fire toward the schoolyard. The first victim was a rabbi and teacher at the school who was shot outside the school gates as he tried to shield his two young sons from the gunman. The gunman shot one of the boys as he crawled away, as his father and brother lay dying on the pavement. He then walked into the schoolyard, chasing people into the building. Inside, he shot at staff, parents, and students. He chased an 8-year-old girl into the courtyard, caught her by her hair and raised a gun to shoot her. The gun jammed at this point and he changed weapons from what the police identified as a 9mm pistol to a .45 calibre gun, and shot the girl in her temple at point-blank range. [Source: Wikipedia]

He subsequently explained, before being shot to death in a face-off with French police, that the Jewish children needed to die because "The Jews kill our brothers and sisters in Palestine."

Did he operate alone? For most parts of the mainstream news reporting industry, the answer was yes. In a blog post ["10-Feb-13: Suicides, haters and lone wolves"], we wrote:

Most media channels, up to and including those reporting on this week's Spanish/Moroccan jihadist, persist in referring to the lone-wolf profile of Mohamed Merah for purposes of comparison. But Merah made 1,800 phone calls to his 180 contacts. And his brother was arrested almost immediately. And now two additional men. So in what way was he a lone wolf? Could it be that it's less threatening, less discomforting, to their audiences if they are left to believe the man planned to do the killings on his own, devoid of an ideological/religious background? How unsettling is it for alert news consumers to try to make sense of the seemingly-endless ranks of young European men professing various expressions of the one religion as the justification for their acts of extreme prejudice, hateful murder and self-destruction?

Now here's a brief update via a Reuters bulletin of a few hours ago. 

France detains suspect in Toulouse killings investigation | Reuters News | May 18, 2013 | PARIS - French anti-terror judges ordered the detention on Saturday of a man on suspicions he aided an al Qaeda-inspired gunman prepare for a shooting spree last year, a judicial source said. Mohamed Merah killed four Jews and three soldiers in and around the southern city of Toulouse in March 2012 before he was shot dead by police. Anti-terror judges have put the unnamed 25-year-old detained man under formal investigation to determine whether he helped Merah steal a scooter that was used in the shootings. Merah's brother Abdelkader has also been in detention since March last year on suspicion of complicity in terrorism, murder and theft. He denies being an accomplice in the killings... [Reuters]

Another Merah-related terror plot emerged in March. We reported it in "12-Mar-13: French Islamists mark anniversary of the death of Merah, the 'lone-wolf' terrorist, via fresh plot to kill innocents"

From Reuters today: Three suspected Islamist militants arrested in southern France appeared to be planning an attack in the days ahead, the Paris prosecutor said on Monday, the anniversary of an al Qaeda-inspired shooting that rocked France. Police found weapons and explosives at the home of one of the suspects in the town of Marignane, near Marseille, and intercepted communications between the men suggested they were close to going into action, prosecutor Francois Molins said. The three men, who were taken in for questioning last week with a fourth man who was later released, were to be placed under formal investigation later on Monday... The timing of the arrests was poignant, coming exactly a year after 23-year-old gunman Mohamed Merah began a rampage that killed three Jewish children, a rabbi and three soldiers in the southern city of Toulouse. He was subsequently tracked down and killed in a shootout with police... Molins said the arrested men, in their 20s, wanted to emulate Merah. "It was clear they were training themselves in making explosives based on a jihadist radicalisation, a glorification of Mohamed Merah, and an affirmed desire to go into action."

There's little doubt that thinking about home-grown made-in-Europe Islamist terrorists is easier to do when you categorize them as one-man bands. You can't blame the French for wanting this to be true. The problem is with how reality keeps messing with comfortable theories.

19-Apr-12: How the murder of three French children has become the launch of a new chapter in the conquest of Europe by the terrorists

London

The murders of three French servicemen followed shortly afterwards by the killing of four innocent Jews – a young schoolteacher and two of his small children and then a third little girl – are receding into the background. 

Not for the families, not for the friends. Perhaps not entirely for Toulouse and Montauban. But probably for France. Certainly for Europe and the rest of us. 

The tragedy becomes an event, and the event turns into a small bump in a long road. So it goes. 

But there are people out there who understand its significance and will not allow it to blend into the background. They are the jihadists. For them, the cold-blooded murder of four innocent Jews in France has become an inspiration, a treasure – literally. Astonishingly, they are terming it an “operation”, a “raid”, even a “battle”. 

A brief analysis, "Jihadis' New Toulouse Inspiration", published this week on the website of the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT), looks at how the killings are being celebrated by means of a widely circulated (and translated) essay called "Lessons and Treasures from the Battle of Toulouse". To remind us, the killer was Mohamed Merah, 24, a French citizen of Algerian origin, who boasted [The Guardian, March 22, 2012 ] to police negotiators that he had brought France to its knees and that his one regret was not having been able to carry out plans for more killings.

Madrid

The Merah killings are being represented as a turning point for Moslems born in Europe and other parts of the non-Arab world. The murders are

"particularly unique and noteworthy... Unlike other successful operations carried out by immigrants, Western-born Muslims are rejecting local governmental attempts to promote non-violent forms of Islam. The operation has also reminded jihadis about the importance of attacking France, which has been spared the successful mass attacks experienced in the United States and elsewhere in Europe. Ultimately, the goal of this raid and others like it, is to produce an al-Qaida "in Western dress with blue eyes" and with a "totally Western appearance."

The source of this terrorist self-worship is an online al-Qaida forum [click to view it]. It describes the murderer as being one of the "fighting men of a special class". The killings of the children are a "practical lesson in bravery". The essay was first released in late March and documented in early April by Middle East Media Research Institute. MEMRI is one of the few - and certainly among the most important - agencies making Arabic source materials available to non-Arabic readers.

IPT refers to other key points in the jihadist manifest:

• The al-Qaida essay targets the large class of unemployed and frustrated Muslim youth in Europe, touching on the frustration of young Europe-born Moslems with life in the West. It says their anger makes them "the best soldiers in al-Qaida's ranks". 
• "The hero of the battle of Toulouse will be an example and a role model for whoever is behind him among the Muslim youth in the West, especially those who have not joined up with Mujahid groups."
• The murders are "a realization of al-Qaida's call... the route to jihad is open and available". This is a way to join the "heroes for Islam". The murders embody "the rejection of the West's anti-extremism campaigns by a Western Muslim."
• "The hardest strike against the Crusader West" is that Western Muslim youth are still joining al-Qaida.
• These young European Moslems "have no social value, no jobs to mention, and no weight or consideration." As long as they believe in Islam's "divine law," they will be "marginalized and allegations would be made against them of being terrorists and radicals". If they get past those "allegations", they will find that Taliban, al-Qaida and Islamic law are the keys to their "honor" being restored. 
• The "wide margins of liberty" in the West, which the al-Qaida writer demonizes throughout his essay, prevent them from becoming downtrodden like the Arabs living under tyrannical rule in their home countries.



Toulouse

• "The economic and social drain on the West is just as much a success as the damage of the raids."
• Euromoslems are becoming "a special and distinguished type of hidden soldiers who are not known or cared about by many people and who are not easy for the enemy to spot, through whatever methods and ways are available to the enemy."
• The London and Madrid "operations" are role models of what can be achieved. 
• "In London and Madrid, local terrorists used explosives to kill dozens using buses and subways. In Mumbai, gunman targeted popular Western hangouts as well as a Jewish center. These "Mujahideen have broken the fear barrier and took the [Muslim] nation to a stage of challenge, by staging quick and unique attacks that target the enemy's economic, political, and military positions in their own homes".

Do we need to expand on why we call it This Ongoing War?

3-Apr-12: After Toulouse

Huguette Chomski Magnis is the Secretary General of Mouvement Pour la Paix et Contre le Terrorisme, and spokesperson of the International Alliance Against Terrorism. Her guest blog appears here at our request, with gratitude for her tireless activism in the struggle against terror and its proponents.

Thoughts from France: Terrorism and resistance                

Huguette Chomski Magnis

Toulouse, March 2012

On the morning of Monday, March 19, 2012, a man called Mohamed Merah grabbed a child, Myriam Monsonego, by the hair. The seconds that followed were an eternity of suffering for the terrified little girl whom he dragged along the ground and then murdered by means of a gunshot to the head.

In doing this, Merah carried out an act of resistance.

We are shocked by such a statement? We cough, we hesitate, we find this a bit exaggerated. 

We find it scandalous that a certain French schoolteacher asked her students to observe a minute’s silence in memory of the child-killer, Merah.   

We stress that almost everyone who matters in France unreservedly condemned his horrifying actions. And this, of course, is true and as it should be.   

But does this mean civil society has satisfied its obligations, and is thereby relieved of further self-examination?   

Is it so extraordinary that one of the lost children of our republic murdered three unarmed French soldiers? All three were of North African origin. Were their deaths an accident? Or did Merah and his accomplices target them as ‘traitors’ on the assumption that they had fought the Taliban?   

Is it so extraordinary that – unable to find a soldier to murder on that Monday – he turned his attentions to the natural alternative: Jewish children, a Jewish school? Have not Jewish children been considered a legitimate target by many whom «those who matter in the world» judge as respectable? 

The call to murder Jews – with no minimum age – is a recurring theme in the broadcasts and sermons of the Tunisian Salafists. The Tunisian authorities remain silent in the face of this murderous hatred.   

A similar message, only slightly more disguised, also exists in the ranks of Egypt’s Moslem Brotherhood with which France’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the United States administration are approving of «dialogue», regarding it as interesting and promising.   

It also exists in the Charter of Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Moslem Brotherhood, and the party that claims responsibility for countless massacres of Israeli children – they praise such massacres as glorious acts of resistance.

They are hardly alone. The Popular Resistance Committees and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a unit of Yasser Arafat’s Fatah, among others, do the same.   

Appallingly, even the official television station of the Palestinian Authority recently broadcast a sermon by the PA-appointed Mufti of Jerusalem, Muhammad Hussein, calling for more killing of Jews. [Source]   

Is the slaughter at the Jewish school in Toulouse worse than the horrifying May 2004 massacre of the Hatuel family: a pregnant mother and her four daughters aged from 9 years old to two?  The mis-named Palestinian Popular Resistance Committees claimed this as one of its heroic military achievements!

Is Toulouse worse than the massacre in Itamar a year ago in which the Fogel family was decimated: both parents and three of their five children, the youngest of whom was three months old?   

No, it is not worse. The reality is that Itamar is Toulouse.   

But we shall be told that what happens in France, by comparison with events far away, affects us to a much larger extent – and this is a thousand times right. The massacre in Toulouse has stunned us. We are still struggling to recover.   

But there is a problem here that cannot be swept under the rug.

There are very «proper» people, not in the least of immigrant background, who found that we made too much of these Jewish children who, although French, were also Israeli and buried in Israel, while the children of Gaza… suggestive suspension dots.

Little wonder that Baroness Catherine Ashton, a luminary among luminaries, found it necessary to associate the memory of the murdered children of Toulouse with the children of Gaza whose blood Mohamed Merah claimed to be avenging.

The children of Gaza have been turned into archetypical victims.   

Let us then talk of the children of Gaza – with a sad and loving thought for the unhappy children killed in the war of 2009.   

I do not know how many they were. Nor does anybody in France know. The figures of Hamas – a thoroughly unreliable source of information – have systematically been accepted.   

But to allow people to believe that Israeli army soldiers deliberately targeted those children, as did Mohamed Merah and his countless terrorist predecessors, is dishonest. Those poor children were civilian victims of war, not the targets of that war.

Dare one ask how many Libyan children were unintentionally killed by NATO bombs during their intervention? Do we even know? Were we given civilian casualty figures for that war?   

The blood-drenched dictator Gaddafi caused a great many casualties in the course of his regime’s collapse.   

Propaganda was the answer and that was correct. It was explained that he used his civilians as human shields. Again, that was correct.
  

But then, what has Hamas done but use its civilian population, children first, as human shields? The difference is that the Hamas has achieved an extraordinary resonance in our media.   

To oversimplify an extremely complex conflict led to mythology replacing reality; assumptions instead of analyses; propaganda instead of objective information.
  

The devastating result is total confusion.   

If the French icon Stephane Hessel supports Hamas and gives it the title of resistance fighters, then is it not feasible to implement Hamas methods into France?
  

This is something that humanists should question. 

So now what? 

Jihadism has landed in France. Merah’s death is in no sense its epilogue. 

For us simple citizens, our concern is neither the jihadists, nor the instrumentalities of State intelligence nor security. Our concern is with the reaction of civil society. Is civil society up to this challenge? 

Why are we not able to do what the Moroccans did after the attacks? Articulate with a clear voice: NO TO TERRORISM. 

The will to defend French republican society should not lead us to self-censorship. On the contrary.   

During the march that took place on the evening of the massacre on Monday, March 19, everyone around me, my comrades in the struggle against racism as well as a prominent lawyer, were categorical: the murderer was a neo-Nazi. The notion that he might be an Islamist was im-po-ssible.  Responsibility might lie with the foul ideas of the National front, or even of the government.  

Why is our reaction not just as clear when the alternative view, the “impossible” theory, is confirmed?   

Why are we asked to avoid speaking of Islamic extremism,  so as not to stigmatize Islam?

This is not what democrats in North Africa and the Middle East expect from us, especially those in Tunisia courageously fighting the rise of the salafists tolerated by the Ennahda regime. 

Pointing to the responsibility of Islamism - political Islam - that oppresses and kills Muslims first of all, enables one to distinguish it from spiritual Islam and the right of worship guaranteed to all citizens.   

There is a dangerous confusion. To illustrate: We know that Sheikh Youssef Qaradawi, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, was invited to address a rally of the UOIF on April 6. Responding to the voices of protest after the Toulouse horror, Nicolas Sarkozy said Qaradawi was not welcome in France.   

The edifying reaction of a certain researcher associate of Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales was that he could not understand the ban. For him, Qaradawi is simply a moderate supporter of the Palestinian cause and of its right to resist, not in solidarity with jihadist movements. [Source]

The researcher should have investigated more carefully. Qaradawi, the so-called moderate, is the author of the hallmark treatise on Islamic law, “The licit and the illicit in Islam”, and a man who prominently glorified the assassins of Sadat.    

Yes, he condemned the London tube bombings; a necessity in order to acquire a position of authority in Europe!   

But he published a justification for suicide bombing attacks on Israeli civilians of all ages. He issued a fatwa allowing to "kill Jewish embryos in the womb of their mothers because once born and grown up, they become soldiers of the IDF". [Source]   

So are we really a «republic united against terrorism»?   

Far from it, unfortunately.

Either condemnation of terrorism is universal or it does not exist.  

Paris - March 27, 2012 (Translation: Bernice Dubois)