Note Israeli flags at silent march in Paris Monday honoring Toulouse victims, from AFP
Agence France Presse PARIS:
Palestinian missions in France on Wednesday condemned the “hateful” attack two days earlier on a Jewish school in the southwestern city of Toulouse in which three children and a rabbi were killed. Palestinian diplomatic missions “condemn in the strongest possible terms the hateful attack carried out in Toulouse,” a statement said.
“All racist crimes are attacks on humanity in general and on the republic in particular.”
“It appears the weapon used in that massacre is the same as that used previously against three French soldiers of different origins, which leads one to suppose the killer is driven by a multifaceted racist hatred,” it said.
The statement was issued in the name of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Palestinian Authority, and Palestine’s missions to France and UNESCO, which is headquartered in Paris.
In Jerusalem, the Guardian’s Phoebe Greenwood was at the funeral for the four Toulouse victims (Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, his two sons, Gabriel and Arieh, and seven-year-old Miriam Monsonego). There is a tape of her report at the Guardian site:
There was a long list of very emotional speakers from both France and Israel and all have spoken with deep emotion about the shootings in Toulouse. The chief rabbi broke down in tears as he vowed that there would be vengeance for their deaths; that God will avenge their deaths. And as he wept he said our enemies shouldn’t think we’re weak because we cried… During his speech there were wails from the crowd.”
One mourner told Greenwood that the murders would make many Jews worried about security in Europe consider moving to Israel. An Israeli woman said: “Many of the people who are thinking about moving to Israel now certainly will.”
Greenwood continued, The message from the French community in Israel to the Jews of Toulouse is, “Come to Israel, your place is here now, this attack is evidence that you think you’re safer in Europe, in fact you’re safer here among your own people in the Jewish state, where you’ll be protected.”
And in a French television report, this is a quote from the president of the Consistoire Central Israélite de France (the central organization for French Jewry), Joël Mergui, speaking to BFMTV from the funeral in Jerusalem today:
Of the presumed killer, Mergui says he is not a man, but “a barbarian, a savage, an animal”
“A new page has turned in the history of our people… Here in Jerusalem I have heard the mother of two children and the wife of a rabbi crying, crying whilst saying that she had left Jerusalem believing that this could only happen in Jerusalem – attacks that target women and children savagely, and in the end this attack was perpetrated in Toulouse, in France, on our soil.”
Also, there is a piece in the Forward by Robert Zaretsky, a professor at the University of Houston, blaming xenophobic statements by French leaders, including Sarkozy, for the climate in which the killer or killers functioned:
we must know what these three related acts of homicidal fury aimed at French Jews and Muslims make clear: They are two communities that, vulnerable yesterday and today to stigmatization and discrimination, have more in common than they sometimes believe. As last year’s horrific massacre in Norway reminds us, the West has no need to seek monsters abroad: We have, all too unhappily, the capacity to create our own.
“Come to Israel, your place is here now, this attack is evidence that you think you’re safer in Europe, in fact you’re safer here among your own people in the Jewish state, where you’ll be protected.”
Remember if you don’t speak Hebrew you won’t get a very nice job !
Pay your taxes to the settlers !
Move to Beit Shemesh and have the locals spit at your daughters. !
Bring your teenagers and have them indoctrinated into the IDF . They probably don’t hate Muslims now but they sure will once they’re done !
Your family may win the ultimate prize by providing a fallen soldier for Mount Herzl cemetery !
The idea that sociopaths like Liberman, Zippy , the Hebron settlers and Bibi would be “my people” would be too much for me. We never even torture farm animals in our family.
I would like to get a personal opinion from the authors. What do you personally think about what had happened there?
Brejvik murders got some many opinion pieces here- I’d be happy to get at least one on the murders of not just Jews and Muslims, but Jewish children shot in the head in pointblank range and Muslim French soldiers executed by their fellow Muslim countryman.
Please give it try at least.
@dimadok
Let’s compare your response here in this discussion to your response to the Norway serial murders:
https://mondoweiss.mystagingwebsite.com/2011/07/regarding-the-tragedy-we-are-now-living-through.html#comment-342427
https://mondoweiss.mystagingwebsite.com/2011/12/gop-presidential-candidates-offer-red-meat-on-israel-at-republican-jewish-coalition-forum.html#comment-399932
https://mondoweiss.mystagingwebsite.com/2011/07/breivik-manifesto-outlines-virulent-right-wing-ideology-that-fueled-norway-massacre.html#comment-342238
https://mondoweiss.mystagingwebsite.com/2011/07/the-norway-massacre-and-the-nexus-of-islamophobia-and-right-wing-zionism.html#comment-342066
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SOOOOO! To conclude:
You were quick to absolve the Norway serial killer’s political motivations of their connection to Zionism when he was diagnosed as being schizo.
It had nothing to do w/ his other political beliefs. It was simply his support for Israel and Zionism that compelled you so urgently to absolve him.
Then you brought up Russia or something. This was an attempt to muddy the water. But all it means is that the guy admired Putin AND Zionism/Israel among other things. Big deal!
The third quote of yours talks about how the Norway killer was simply anti-social and xenophobic. Yet, he singled out Muslims. You actually dismiss the profundity of his Islamophobia by proposing that he hates Jews more but there simply weren’t enough of them around for him to be anti-Jewish immigration!
Here again, you dismiss his political motivations even though the guy took a lot of time and care to spell it all out.
And finally, you make sure we know that Israeli politicians condemned the Norway killings.
Now, I want you to acknowledge that Palestinian politicians have condemned these killings in France.
Oh and to put the icing on the cake, let’s resort to the typical Zionist meme of counting corpses.
In Norway, the serial murderer killed 77 people and injured 151! That’s far more than what happened in France! So stop whining and singling out France!
there’s a really good post i highly recommend
http://frustratedarab.com/2012/03/20/afghanistan-selective-outrage-and-sob-stories/