What are the real lessons to be learned from the Toulouse killings?
22.05.12
Joining M. Hollande in these insinuations was François Bayrou, the centrist
presidential candidate, who claimed that the murder of children “because of
their origin, of the religion of their family” could be linked “to a growing
climate of intolerance” in France.
The message of both men could not have been clearer. France, and the French
political right in particular, bore some responsibility for these crimes,
and greater tolerance towards immigrants was therefore needed if similar
incidents were not to happen again.
Barely had this lesson been proffered, however, than police reported that they
suspected the killer of having an altogether different identity. He was not
a skinhead after all, but Mohammed Merah, a 24-year old French citizen of
Algerian extraction with suspected links to al Qaeda. Just as his identity
changed, so his suspected motives and the lessons France needed to learn
from them changed also. The soldiers had been killed not because they
weren’t white, but because they had fought for France in Afghanistan. The
Jewish children were killed to avenge the deaths of Palestinian children
killed by Israeli forces in Gaza and the West Bank.
Source: Telegraph.co.uk