By Rabbi François Garai GENEVA, Switzerland: The assassination of French Muslim and Christian military personnel and French Jewish civilians two weeks ago in Toulouse and Montauban has rocked France. Yet beyond the fears that this act has stirred among both French Jews and their Muslim compatriots, the desire for co-existence prevails. Many of us European …
By Ian Buruma NEW YORK: What possessed the young French Muslim Mohammed Merah to murder three Jewish schoolchildren, a rabbi, and three soldiers, two of them fellow Muslims? What possessed another man, Anders Breivik, to gun down more than 60 teenagers in a Norwegian summer camp last year? These murder sprees are so unusual that people …
By Dominique Moisi PARIS: “One must fight both terrorists and the causes of terrorism with the same determination.” That formula, coined ten years ago in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, by leaders as diverse as Javier Solana, then Secretary General of NATO, and US President George W. Bush, is as valid …
By Pauline Froissart / AFP PARIS: Muslims in French suburbs remain vulnerable to extremist indoctrination but those lured into radicalism are an “ultra-minority” and the spread of jihadism is declining, experts say. Mohamed Merah, a 23-year-old suspected Al-Qaeda militant of Algerian descent was killed Thursday following a shootout with police, after being linked to seven murders …
By Laurent Lozano / AFP TOULOUSE: French police kept up pressure Thursday as the siege of a self-proclaimed Al-Qaeda militant entered a second day, but officials admitted they were not certain he was still alive. Blasts and gunshots were heard overnight near the flat in Toulouse in southern France where the gunman suspected of killing seven …
By Yoav Lemmer / AFP JERUSALEM: Thousands of weeping mourners attended the funerals at a Jerusalem cemetery on Wednesday of three French-Israeli children and a teacher killed in a shooting spree at a Jewish school in France. Among the 2,000 or so people gathered at the sprawling Givat Shaul cemetery on the western outskirts of …
By Laurent Lozano and Alex Peyrille / AFP TOULOUSE: France launched a massive manhunt for a serial killer on Tuesday, as the nation’s schools observed a minute of silence for the three Jewish children and the teacher he gunned down. President Nicolas Sarkozy paid silent homage to the victims at a school in Paris close to …
