Mohamed Merah throws himself from a window and dies – photos
MOHAMMED Mera, aka Mohamed Merah and Mohammed Merah – the news media has yet to settle on the name of the Toulouse mass murderer is dead.
He came out shooting as police stormed his flat. He jumped from a window at his flat. He was shooting as he jumped.
So. Why did the Muslim murder Jewish children? Why did the man murder French soldiers, two of them Muslim? Why did the nutter shoot at the police? How does the media speak about Mohamed Merah?
D.G. Myers looks at the New York Times coverage:
In reporting that “French Police Say They Have Cornered Suspect in School Shooting,” the New York Times earlier today described Merah as a “French national of Algerian descent,” carefully avoiding any mention of his religion. After saying that Merah “told negotiators that he belonged to Al Qaeda,” and after identifying his motives at last (“the attacks were meant to avenge the deaths of Palestinian children and to protest French military deployments abroad”), the Times went on to reveal that Merah “called himself a mujahedeen [sic],” which the newspaper helpfully translated as a “freedom fighter.” (Because, you know, to shoot Jewish schoolchildren in the head at close range is obviously to strike a blow for freedom.)
Is it anti-Semitism? Mark Steyn wrote in 2009:
In Paris, the state-owned TV network France-2 broadcasts film of dozens of dead Palestinians killed in an Israeli air raid on New Year’s Day. The channel subsequently admits that, in fact, the footage is not from January 1st 2009 but from 2005, and, while the corpses are certainly Palestinian, they were killed when a truck loaded with Hamas explosives detonated prematurely while leaving the Jabaliya refugee camp in another of those unfortunate work-related accidents to which Gaza is sadly prone. Conceding that the Palestinians supposedly killed by Israel were, alas, killed by Hamas, France-2 says the footage was broadcast “accidentally.”
In Toulouse, a synagogue is firebombed; in Bordeaux, two kosher butchers are attacked; at the Auber RER train station, a Jewish man is savagely assaulted by 20 youths taunting, “Palestine will kill the Jews;” in Villiers-le-Bel, a Jewish schoolgirl is brutally beaten by a gang jeering, “Jews must die.”
Did another falsehood trigger attacks on Jews in France?
Der Spiegel says Merha was a “lone wolf“. Is Merah like Robert Bales, the US soldier accused of killing 16 people in Afghanistan? Or is Merah more like more like Major Nidal, the Fort Hood jihadi?
John Lichfield asked Independent readers:
Did campaign that played to the far right trigger actions of killer?
Was it just a coincidence that the murders – and the probably related killings of three soldiers of North African origin last week – occurred five weeks before the first round of the election? Were they somehow aimed at the French state itself? Or driven by issues within the campaign?
Only one mainstream politician had the courage to make the connection publicly. Corinne Lepage, a former centre-right Environment Minister, suggested in a tweet that the divisive themes of immigration and national identity raised in recent weeks by President Nicolas Sarkozy might, unwittingly, have triggered the actions of a “madman”.
“A madman? Maybe,” she tweeted. “But the unpleasant political climate and hatred can excite people.”
The BBC’s Justin Webb mused:
‘There are some who wonder that some politicians, including perhaps Mr Sarkozy must bear some responsibility, not necessarily for what happened, but for the context in which it happened. They are accused of creating a climate of suspicion about, possibly even hatred, of minority groups.’
Lindsey German tells us:
The shootings in south west France were, it appears, the work of a young Algerian Muslim, who had been trained in camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan and was one of the prisoners who escaped from Kandahar prison in a Taliban jailbreak.
No one can justify such attacks, which have seen the killing of Jewish schoolchildren and a rabbi, and of French soldiers of North African and Caribbean descent.
But nor should anyone be in any doubt that this act cannot be explained as an isolated hate crime, or the deed of one fanatic. It is the terrible and disastrous outcome of a series of policies which could have been avoided and which now risk making the situation even worse.
Firstly there have been the years of racism against Muslims in France…The way to end the terror attacks would be to find a political solution to the grievances and injustices which give rise to it in the first place. Fat chance of Sarkozy, Cameron and the rest even thinking about that.
What of 9/11?
GErman is with the Stop The WAr Coalition. Harry’s Place has a list of
And so, this is the view of the Stop The War Campaign. Harry’s Place has a list of prominent officers and activists:
- Tony Benn
- George Galloway
- Tariq Ali
- Anas Al-Tikriti
- Louise Christian
- Tam Dalyell
- Caroline Lucas MEP
- Jeremy Corbyn MP
- Kate Hudson
- Andrew Murray
- Kevin Ovenden
- John Rees
- Chris Nineham
- Walter Wolfgang
- Salma Yaqoob
Cathy Ashton’s name is not on the list.
The Guardian’s editorial told us:
Until the massive manhunt tracks down its quarry, it is dangerous to speculate on motives. They may have no connection with the 17th Parachute regiment of Montauban, three of whose members were filmed in 2008 making Nazi salutes.We simply do not know whether the shootings are connected to the anniversary of the end of the Algerian war, or whether France is on the brink of its own Oslo moment, when Anders Behring Breivik massacred 77 people at a Social Democrat summer camp last year.
Ed West tells Telegraph readers: “Don’t blame Islam for the Toulouse killings.”
Many people kill in the name of jihad but they do not represent Islam or Muslims, the vast majority of whom will be horrified by the Toulouse killings. It is not religion that turns some young Muslim men in the West violent, but the sense of alienation and frustration that inevitably comes from being a second-generation immigrant
Is it?
The Times calls Merah an “Islamist gunman”.
Merah was said by officials to be a petty crook who had become a fanatical Salafist, or ultra-conservative Islamist, trained for a mission by al-Qaeda groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Described by acquaintances as a quiet loner, he negotiated with police throughout the day in his flat in the suburb of Côte Pavée.
He showed no remorse for the deaths of three paratroopers in two attacks in the past two weeks and the killing of three children and a teacher who was the father of two of them at a Jewish school in Toulouse on Monday, officials said.
Merah told them, and also an editor he telephoned at the France 24 television news channel, that he had acted alone to avenge the deaths of Palestinian children and to punish France for its part in the Afghanistan conflict. The dead soldiers had recently returned from Afghanistan and like Merah, were all of Muslim North African origin.
Mohamed Merah was born in Toulouse on October 10, 1988. On February 24, when he was jailed for a month for driving without a licence. He applied to join the French army in 2008 but was rejected. In 2010 he applied to the Foreign Legion, but quit after a recruitment day. And now he’s dead.
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A man is overcome by emotion during a ceremony for the shooting victims at the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school where a gunman opened fire Monday killing four people in Toulouse, southwestern France, Tuesday, March 20, 2012. Police blanketed southern France on Tuesday, searching for a gunman _ possibly a racist, anti-Semitic serial killer _ who killed four people at a Jewish school and may have filmed his attack.(AP Photo/Remy de la Mauviniere)
Posted: 22nd, March 2012 | In: Key Posts, Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
