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Home » Toulouse killer dead after police standoff

Toulouse killer dead after police standoff

The New Neo Posted on by

As soon as I heard about the police standoff involving the Toulouse killer Mohammed Merah, I suspected it would end more or less like this: with his death, either in a firefight or by his own hand. I thought it more likely to be the latter, but it turned out to be the former, with Merah emerging from the building, guns blazing, after police had stormed it.

His death destroys whatever chance police would have had to learn more facts from the horse’s mouth, as it were. But it also has the benefit of denying Merah the propaganda platform of a trial. My guess is that authorities have already learned quite a bit from his computer, and perhaps his brother, anyway. And although Merah claimed to be al Qaeda trained and might have indeed have some affiliation with various terror groups, it also seems as though the murders he committed were a case of improvisation on his part.

Earlier, Merah had told about his motives [emphasis mine]:

He made a series of disclosures, officials said, claiming the killings of three paratroopers last week and an attack on a Jewish school that left a rabbi and three children dead, and saying he had planned more killings to avenge the killings of Palestinian children and to protest French intervention abroad and the banning of the full Islamic veil in France.

Got any idea whom one of those “Palestinian children” might be? I would wager a lot of money that it was Mohammad al Durah, whose death (or possible death; see this) in 2000 was falsely exploited by French TV to give the impression he was killed by Israelis when he was not, and whose image became a rallying cry for avenging Muslims all over the world. Merah, who was raised in France but was the son of Algerian immigrants, would have been close to 12 years old at the time. A very impressionable age, and the same age as al Durah.

The Times article about Merah’s death and crimes goes on to quote various Muslims in France as saying that they condemn his acts, and that they worry that this incident will increase the anger and fear against them as a group. I would guess that’s true. I wonder whether it was also one of Merah’s aims, unconscious or not. His first three victims—before he killed the rabbi and three children at a religious school—were French paratroopers of Arab Muslim origin.

The Times article quotes French Interior Minister Guéant as saying that the murders of these three military men were not related to their ethnic backgrounds. Oh, really? Why not? Merah’s other murders certainly were, and my best guess is that Merah choose the paratroopers because they were of similar background to him but collaborators with the hated enemy, France and the West. So there’s no reason to believe he wouldn’t have considered any backlash against cooperative Muslims in France to be a feature of his crimes, and not a bug.

Comments

Toulouse killer dead after police standoff — 27 Comments

  2. Wow. The Al Durah blood libel and its bloody consequences. What a connection, Neo.

  3. Spoof headline from the UK some time back.
    “Muslim leaders concerned about backlash from next week’s bombing.”
    Okay. Islam is a religion of peace. Fine. But they keep generating these manic murderers.
    Something like three-tenths of one percent of Muslims who’ve died of violence in the last half century were killed by Israelis. You’d think somebody would be interested in who killed the other 99.7%. Wouldn’t you?
    Hell. Muslims killl more Muslims in a week than the Israelis have killed in ten years.

  4. The Times article about Merah’s death and crimes goes on to quote various Muslims in France as saying that they condemn his acts, and that they worry that this incident will increase the anger and fear against them as a group.

    It would appear that the Muslims in the West who do the jihadi thing do not give this much consideration.

  5. This was really stupid to storm the flat. How long a man can last without water and sleep? After another 2 or 3 day he would be so weak that they could subdue him without much fuss. Why to haste?

  6. sergey: He needed killing. Plus, it sounded like he might have charged the police.

  7. I’m surprised that the MSM even reported this, because they usually bury things like this that make Islam and Muslims look bad.

    Islam is the Religion of Peace, all right. We dumb “unbelievers” will apparently continue to make excuses until the last gullible, timid unbeliever is killed and, “all is for Allah.”

    I note, for instance, the statement in the last few days by the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, that
    “all the Christian churches in the area have to be destroyed.” A statement that has gotten little press. Gee, I wonder what kind of press an equivalent statement by the Pope concerning Mosques might have gotten?

    This lack of attention to developments/statements coming out of the Muslim world following on the heels of the even less reported 2010 statement by Muhammad Badi, the newly appointed head of the Muslim Brotherhood, in which he essentially declared war on the U.S. (see http://www.wnd.com/2010/10/214245/) .

    Sometimes I wonder if we are just “too dumb to live.”

  8. “The Times article about Merah’s death and crimes goes on to quote various Muslims in France as saying that they condemn his acts, and that they worry that this incident will increase the anger and fear against them as a group.”

    The suburbs of Paris and even in the city itself one can see graffiti which is jihadist. I somehow doubt a majority of Muslims in France are anti-jihad or sharia. The only reason they are in France is that France allows citizens of former colonies to enter France and become citizens if they can speak/read passable French. They are there for employment or generous social welfare benefits. They are not in France because they wish to assimilate into French culture.

  9. Sometimes I wonder if we are just “too dumb to live.” -WD

    Many simply hope it goes away. They want pay attention to the Final 4 or the Super Bowl or American Idol. Most do not want to think about the darkness lurking in the corners, they prefer to concentrate on the blue screen light flickering on their corneas.

  11. Propaganda is great, isn’t it. You can kill people indirectly 30 years after the fact. And it cost nothing to do to begin with.

  13. Death

    Steeped in pastures of graves filled quietly
    Years of quiet rock and the feathered mare
    I sense a quiet stock. Why I don’t see,
    But their breath is quiet fair to me

    Fair maid, fair lass, longing is next to last
    Past the runner’s Sun, even past His kiss
    We long to love, and loving is our task
    until longing leading love leaves ship’s mast.

  14. In all fairness, you don’t need to point to al-Durah. According to B’Tselem, 954 Palestinian and 123 Israeli children under the age of 18 have been killed since 2000. Sickeningly, some of the Palestinian children killed were “recruited” as suicide bombers, but the vast majority were killed by the IDF: in air strikes, shot by Israeli soldiers, etc.

    You can argue that those deaths are acceptable collateral damage, or that all those deaths by the IDF were indirectly the fault of Palestinian adults who put those kids in harm’s way, but it does none of those kids, Israelis or Palestinians, any good to say “anyone angry about dead Palestinian kids must be thinking about this one incident that turned out to be false.” There are hundreds more–Israelis and Palestinians–that are plenty real and, whatever else you think about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they’re still kids who died in a conflict they had no role in starting.

  16. Roger: actually, “in all fairness,” you need to get your information from someone other than the left-wing propaganda organization B’Tselem [emphasis mine]:

    B’Tselem–“The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories”–was founded in 1989 by what the organization refers to as “a group of prominent academics, attorneys, journalists, and Knesset members” whose politics were overwhelmingly on the far left of the political spectrum. Its purpose was to “document and educate the Israeli public and policymakers about human-rights violations in the Occupied Territories,” and during the 1990s it largely focused on that internal mission. Yet with the onset of the Palestinian terror war in 2000 and Israel’s increasingly tough responses to it over the succeeding four years, B’Tselem’s mission shifted from trying to inform and influence the Israeli debate to becoming the primary resource for those journalists, officials, and activists who saw in Israel’s self-defense the full flowering of a new age of Israeli oppression and criminality.

    B’Tselem employs Israelis, and there is no doubt that the major reason for its appeal–especially internationally–is due to the perception that it is an Israeli group exposing Israeli crimes in order to achieve a more just Israeli society. Yet almost its entire annual budget is provided by European governments and American foundations, such as the New Israel Fund and the Ford Foundation.

    That money pays for 41 staffers who work primarily in two divisions, data and communications. Most of the 19 members of the data division are Palestinians who live in the West Bank and Gaza and supply a constant stream of anecdotes and testimony to the group’s Jerusalem headquarters, where a few researchers compile the information and the 10-person communications department packages and disseminates it to journalists, other NGOs, policymakers, and activists. B’Tselem mounts campaigns on certain issues, such as the supposed illegality of Israeli communities over the armistice lines of 1949 and the supposed illegality of West Bank checkpoints erected to interdict suicide bombers….

    Another of B’Tselem’s major activities is compiling statistical reports that it hopes will demonstrate, with empirical credibility, Israel’s abuses. After Operation Cast Lead, for example, B’Tselem made headlines with a report claiming that a majority of Palestinians killed during the war were civilians, attacking the accuracy of the IDF’s numbers and undermining the perception that the IDF had fought carefully in Gaza.

    During the war, B’Tselem reported, 1,387 Palestinians were killed, 773 of whom “did not take part in the hostilities” and only 330 of whom were combatants. This curious phrasing, which was shortened in media coverage simply to “civilians,” was in fact a bit of sophistry employed to conceal B’Tselem’s results-oriented approach to statistics. The IDF’s own investigation, by contrast, counted 1,166 Palestinians deaths, of whom 709 were terrorists and 295 were civilians–a commendable ratio given that much of the war was fought, by Hamas’s design, in civilian areas.

    B’Tselem arrived at such a high number of “civilian” deaths by adopting a definition of “combatant” that transformed terrorists into civilians. The group only counted those “who fulfill a continuous combat function” as legitimate targets. Such people include full-time members of the Hamas “armed wing,” and virtually nobody else–not Hamas policemen and not Hamas political and spiritual leaders, financiers, propagandists, recruiters, weapons smugglers, or support personnel. By adhering to this definition, the United States would be barred from killing many members of al-Qaeda….

    B’Tselem also claimed that 320 civilian minors were killed. Yet the group’s own statistics on the male—female ratio of those minors strongly suggests that many of the older minors were in fact combatants. As documented by two Israeli researchers who examined B’Tselem’s data, the male—female ratio of those in the 11-and-younger group was nearly 1:1. Yet as the age rose, so did the gender disparity, to the point where the male-female ratio for 17- and 18-year-olds was more than 6:1. If Israel had been indiscriminately attacking civilians, how would it have been possible for such an overwhelming number of them to have been males?

    Recently, B’Tselem’s statistics were repudiated by an unlikely source, the “interior minister” of Hamas. In November 2010, he told the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper that between 600 and 700 Hamas militants had been killed during the war–double the number claimed by B’Tselem, and almost exactly the number reported a year earlier by the IDF.

    The article then goes on to give an in-depth description of the background, education, and leftist and anti-Israel pro-Palestinian leaning of the leaders of B’Tselem. It mentions that there are other NGOs that are similar in leanings, and then says:

    The tactics of the ideological war they are waging are unmistakable. The groups relentlessly accuse Israel of committing war crimes, human-rights offenses, and violations of international law. They champion the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian narrative of victimhood and Israeli oppression. They supply the highly massaged “facts” and claims that animate journalistic, diplomatic, and political activism against Israel, such as the Goldstone Report. They advocate for “lawfare” against Israeli officials–that is, prosecuting them for war crimes in European courts. And they argue either openly or by implication that Zionism itself–the existence of a Jewish state–is undemocratic, oppressive, and racist.

    This war of delegitimization is so dangerous because it is targeted precisely at the heart of Western support for Israel–the belief in Europe and especially in America that Israel is not only a legitimate nation-state but also an exemplar of Western liberal values, deserving of the free world’s support and its protection in the face of constant attacks. The genius of the NGO movement is its promotion of Israelis themselves to make the case against Israel. Who better to convince Westerners that they are wrong to admire Israel than Jews feigning concern over Israel’s moral standing?

  17. Roger, no one I know who supports Israel lauds the death of ANYONE except those who kill Israelis. It has been the Palestinians who glorify their shahids, their martyrs, and I’ve read chilling interviews with Palestinian mothers who prayed for their children, even for some who lost multiple children to war, to “avenge” their Palestinian brethren and grow up to be murderers/martyrs.

    It is the culture of death that makes it impossible for anything to change in the conflict. Israelis want to live, and they don’t delight in killing. It is the Palestinians who celebrated the death of 3000 in NYC on 9/11. It is the Palestinians who throw candy and celebrate when an Israeli child is murdered; they did after the Tolouse murders.

    I don’t know of any time where this has happened in Israel. Not once. When Baruch Goldstein murdered a large group of Palestinians in Hebron, a place where Jews were murdered in 1929 in pogroms…instead of a celebration of “revenge”, there was mass condemnation of the attack from the government, from the vast majority of the religious establishment and most of Israel. There were some who saw Goldstein as a martyr because they felt peace talks were counterproductive and Goldstein’s actions had put a crimp in the talks.

    But there were no parades, no candy throws, and no teaching through the country that Goldstein was a role model to follow, in distinction to the Palestinians who name parks and buildings and streets after mass murderers.

    You want to make an equivalency between the children of Israel and the Palestinian children. Yes, I will too. All deaths of children are horribly tragic, but it’s easy to stop it. Hamas et al can stop shooting rockets from civilian areas. There’s a novel idea. Hamas used children as human shields. Even the flawed Goldstone report admitted to it. (The Israelis have tried to use pinpoint targeting to avoid civilian casualties, not always successfully and there have been terrible tragedies…but at least there is a recognition of pain and sorrow, while the other side throws candy! The kids and parents murdered in Itamar? Celebration and party time in the Palestinian areas!

    Outside of Goldstein, tell me where else the reverse happened? Where either the Palestinians lamented the tragic death of children or did NOT celebrate the murders of children? I’m open to evidence I’m wrong.

    This animal who killed in Tolouse…you want to justify it because…why? He murders three kids under the age of 10, deliberately shooting up a school…and Palestinians have been targeting kids for longer than there were the “occupied territories” after ’67, going back to before the ’48 war. ANY Jew was a target, and statements to that affect continue to this day. A Jew, whether 1 or 100 is a legitimate target as a “soldier of Israel”.

    This is what we are dealing with here, and not just the lies of B’Tzelem (though Neo, that was a fantastic and necessary fisking of them and I will pass it around to my more deluded acquaintances when I need to); a culture that celebrates and encourages murder and death, including those of children, and another that wants to end the deaths.

    Yes, I know not every Palestinian mother wants her child to die, but there are enough interviews out there to realize, something is wrong. But look at the story of 2 young kids who were murdered in 2001, Koby Mandell and Yosef Ishran. There was no collateral damage. It was cold-blooded murder, like that done to the Fogels in Itamar (a crime that the perpetrators were PROUD of).

    How DARE you try to make equivalence because of numbers. The killings could stop tomorrow were the Palestinians to eschew violence and the promotion of hatred. It’s the same culture that drove this animal in Toulouse to murder 7 people, including 3 beautiful children.

  18. Roger,

    Kill one of my children or grandchildren and I will attempt, to the best of my abilities, to kill 1,000 of your children or grandchildren or your cousins to the 9th degree. From my POV its not an eye for an eye proposition. Its an eye for 1,000 eyes proposition.

  19. Roger,

    I forget to add fold it five ways and stick it where the sun don’t shine and failed to mention the horse you rode in on. Please excuse my oversight.

    Sincerely,
    Parker

  20. The hordes are no longer at the gates, but emerging from within, having been invited by left-wing sympathizers. Unfortunately, the Europeans cannot afford a war of attrition. Not only are they paying the living costs of their replacements, but they are simultaneously failing to procreate in sufficient numbers to preserve their civilization. Where their ancestors resisted and overcame Islamic imperialism, the contemporary Europeans are quietly submitting.

    Well, it’s not too late, but they must reconsider their participation in the sexual revolution. By bending to their desire for instant gratification, they have followed a progressive path to evolutionary dysfunction. In their pursuit of enlightenment, they have invited extinction.

  21. Roger:
    Sickeningly, some of the Palestinian children killed were “recruited” as suicide bombers, but the vast majority were killed by the IDF: in air strikes, shot by Israeli soldiers, etc.

    My reaction is that a culture that recruits children to be suicide bombers has no moral authority whatsoever to denounce the killing of children.

    A culture which celebrates the suicide bombing of its opponents- which the Palestinians have done time and again- has no moral authority to denounce the killing of its people.

  22. Must be great living in France. Where mass killers need to get 3 X Columbines before the police even get off their stool to go investigate and catch the killer. Maybe two of those mass shootings were in Muslim Enclaves that didn’t let French cops in?

  23. It is the culture of death that makes it impossible for anything to change in the conflict.

    How about Israel make it a real culture on death by making them live in a Valley of Death?

    That’s what nukes are for. If they don’t want peace enough, why do they give moral sanction to the Palestinians? 1000 Palestinian murderers and serial killers released for 2 dead Jewish bodies? That is going to do something about Islam or Palestinians or Arabs?

    The Israelis and the Jews are only fooling themselves. Some fool themselves by voting 70% for Democrats like obama, and against Richard Nixon. Others fool themselves by catering to the prejudices of their racial enemies.

  24. Disarm the Palestinians and you will have peace. Disarm Israel and Israel will cease to exist.

  26. Violence begets violence. You take a life you will loose your life. Too much of this happening today! It is very sad! God help us all!

  27. Roger,

    The killing of Arab settler-colonist children is indeed regrettable, a lamentable consequence of the Jewish State’s failure to carry out its duty of removing all the Arab settler-colonists from the bounds of the Land of Israel, opting instead to maintain an occupation.

    It is to be hoped the Jewish State will soon have proper leaders who act upon the Jewish obligation of repulsing all the Arab colonists currently illegally occupying the Jewish Land of Israel, following which all such killings, the result of unscrupulous guerrilla warfare waged by the Arab colonists using their own children as human shields, will cease completely.

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