A Monstrous Hatred

My heart is full of grief and rage tonight;  grief for the deaths of three children, aged eight, six and three and of the 29-year-old father of two of them, in Toulouse today, victims of some evil spawn of Satan;  and rage that their murderer – this piece of human excrement, this coward who targets children –  is still alive and walking free on this earth. A gunwielding motorcyclist opened fire on a Jewish school, mowing down anyone in his path. When he ran out of bullets in one gun, he produced another and continued his orgy of murder.

Anti-semitic outrages of this sort have been on the rise in France over the past decade. Frequently, the perpetrators have come from the country’s growing Muslim community. This time, however, the fact that at least one of the firearms used in carrying out this act of barbarism, was used last week in two similar ride-by motorcycle shootings, in which French soldiers of North African (Muslim) origin were the victims, seems to indicate that the killer or killers belong to the extreme neo-Nazi Right and that they are motivated by hatred of all racial minorities.

It also appears that the Jewish school,  Lycée Ozar Hatorah, which was targeted today, had little or no security and from what I’m reading on Facebook, this seems to be true of most Jewish schools in France.

Evidently, relying on the local police is not enough. The Jewish community must take steps to protect itself. And, in view of the targeting last week of members of the Muslim North African community in France,  I wonder if it would be asking too much to hope that all of the Children of Abraham might band together,  Children of Israel and Children of Ishmael, to combat our mutual enemy.