2 weeks ago I was in Paris. A beautiful city, but one of the things that I noticed was that the only visible security I saw was around national monuments (such as the Eiffel tower or museums) and Jewish Institutions (Shuls and the Jewish Museum).
Looks like anti-Semitism is still very much alive and well in the host to Europe’s largest Jewish community.
Of course, this was further proven by the horrific events in Toulouse this week – but what may have motivated the gunman (other than raw anti-Semitism?)
Last week UN employee Khulood Badawi tweeted a picture of a school girl, covered in blood who died in a schoolyard accident in 2006 with the caption “Palestine is bleeding. Another child killed by Israel … Another father carrying his child to the grave”
This week a gunman in France murdered 4 people in a schoolyard including 3 children at close range, and today French police described his motive as "He wanted revenge for the Palestinian children and he also wanted to take revenge on the French army because of its foreign interventions."
Anyone out there think Ms Badawi of the UN is at least partially responsible for inciting murder?
Meanwhile, The European Union’s Foreign Policy Chief, Catherine Ashton, was quoted in Maariv as responding to the shooting by comparing children gunned down in cold blood with “what’s happening” to the children in Gaza:
“When we think about what happened today in Toulouse, we also remember what happened in Norway last year, and what is happening now in Syria and Gaza, and other areas of the world,”
I’m not sure what in particular Ms Ashton is referring to in Gaza, did she also take Ms Badawi’s false tweet at face value, or does she really believe that that there are Israeli actions equivalent to walking into a schoolyard, pointing a gun at a small child, and firing at short range?
It seems like there are employees of International agencies who have no problem encouraging and inciting anti-Semitism.
