Brother of Toulouse Killer: Incitement Matters

CAMERA has long pointed out that anti-Jewish and anti-Israel incitement, a phenomenon often ignored or downplayed in the Western media, helps fuel continued violence and prevents a peaceful resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

If you're not sure incitement matters, ask Abdelghani Merah. His younger brother, Mohammed Merah, murdered three Jewish schoolchildren, a rabbi and three soldiers in and near the French city of Toulouse. Abdelghani wants to make sure people to know why this happened.

France 24 reports:

Mohammed Merah, the gunman who shot and killed a rabbi, three Jewish children and three paratroopers in the southwestern French city of Toulouse in March 2012, grew up surrounded by racial hatred and anti-semitism, according to a book written by his older brother.

“I will explain how my parents raised [Mohammed] in an atmosphere of racism and hate before the Salafis [ultraconservative Muslims] could douse [him] in religious extremism,” 36-year-old Abdelghani Merah wrote in his book “My brother, the terrorist,” due out on Wednesday.

“I am furious with my parents for bringing him up in violence and intolerance, with my sister Souad who applauded his fundamentalist delusions, with my brother Abdelkader who actively encouraged him,” he wrote. ...

Entire Merah family responsible

At the opening of Sunday’s broadcast Abdelghani said: “My mother always said ‘we, the Arabs, we were born to hate Jews’. I heard this speech throughout my childhood.”

In 2003, Abdelghani was stabbed by his younger brother Abdelkader because he had started a relationship with a woman with Jewish family connections. Abdelkader is the only person to have been arrested in connection with the March killings. He is accused of directly helping 23-year-old Mohammed plan and carry out the murders.

But according to Abdelghani, the entire Merah family bears responsibility for a crime that shocked France and lifted the veil on simmering anti-semitism within France’s large Muslim community.

“I am furious with my maternal uncles ... who ceaselessly propagated hatred, racism and anti-semitism in front of us from a very young age,” he writes in his book.

According to the Los Angeles Times, when guests at Mohammed's funeral praised his actions, Abdelghani stormed out shouting, "My brother is not a hero! He's a vulgar assassin!"