This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/5395

Jewish Supermarket Bombed, French Embassies Closed due to Muslim Cartoonophobia

September 20, 2012

Posted By Daniel Greenfield On September 20, 2012 @ 3:44 pm In The Point | No Comments

It's funny how Muslims can kill thousands of people without them having to close embassies around the world or be unable to go out and buy Halal meat. But when a French satirical magazine runs a few cartoons of Mohammed, then French schools and embassies around the world have to be closed, because the Muslim world already showed on the latest September 11 that it is incapable of abiding by the norms of civilized society.

Is Cartoonophobia or Islamophobia a greater problem? You decide.

The French foreign ministry in Paris said it would close its embassies and schools on Friday, the Muslim day of prayer, in around 20 Islamic countries because of fears of being targeted by angry protesters.

Tunisia's ruling Islamist Ennahda party called for peaceful protests against the cartoons it branded a "new attack" on the Prophet Mohammed.

"In the current context, the French community is urged to be vigilant, to avoid all public gatherings and to stay away from sensitive areas," the French embassy said in Tunis. "The French school network and Tunisia's French Institute will be closed from midday on Wednesday… until Monday morning."

In the Arab Spring roll call, Egypt and Tunisia, both run by Islamists, have called for protests. Libya's security forces have collaborated with the Islamist attackers.

And the news isn't good for French Jews either.

A small package bomb exploded inside a kosher supermarket in Sarcelles, a Paris suburb, on Wednesday, one day after Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, wounding four people.

The Jewish Community Protection Service (SPCJ) said two individuals dressed in black threw an explosive device inside the Naouri Market store at lunchtime. Sometimes called "Little Jerusalem," Sarcelles, located north of Paris, is home to a large Jewish community.

Was this attack really about Muslim Cartoonophobia? Then why target a Jewish supermarket? The dirty truth about Muslim protests is that they are about attacks on existing enemies carried out under the flag of blasphemy, much as Bin Laden declared war on America with a pretext about American troops in Saudi Arabia.

"There is a concealed threat of violence here which could explode at any moment. Local youth live with it, they express it every day. It's very easy, we are visible targets," fumed Gerard Bouzag, 50, a trader who buys his supplies from the attacked shop.

"We are especially anxious given the approaching Jewish festivals. It's the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) next Wednesday, we don't know what might happen," confided Hubert Ayat, a pensioner who's lived in the area since 1945.

There was little damage caused, but the emotional trauma is significant," declared Joel Mergui, president of the Central Consistory of France, from the scene. "Where is it going to end up? Will it eventually be necessary to protect all the places where the Jewish community goes, the business, the restaurants?", he demanded.

The Jewish community… and then eventually every non-Muslim community.


Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://frontpagemag.com

URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/jewish-supermarket-bombed-embassies-closed-due-to-muslim-cartoonophobia/

-------------------------------------------------

Suspect killed in shootout during arrest of suspected jihadist cell in France

Lori Hinnant
The Associated Press

PARIS—Police carried out raids across France on Saturday after DNA on a grenade that exploded last month at a kosher grocery store led them to a suspected jihadist cell of young Frenchmen recently converted to Islam.

The man whose DNA was identified, named by police as Jeremy Sydney, was killed by police after he opened fire on them, slightly wounding three officers in the eastern city of Strasbourg. Officials said he had been under surveillance since last spring, around the time a French Islamic went on a shooting rampage against a Jewish school and French soldiers, killing seven people.

Eleven other suspects were arrested across the country Saturday, according to the Sipa news agency. One man was carrying a loaded gun, and police found weapons, cash and a list of Paris-area Israeli associations during the raids.

Paris prosecutor François Molins said all the arrested suspects were French and recent converts to Islam. They were all born in the 1980s or early 1990s. Four of the men involved in the raid had written wills.

"You can imagine what their other plans could have been," counterterrorism official Eric Voulleminot said at a news conference with Molins.

The prosecutor described 33-year-old Sydney, sentenced in 2008 to two years in prison for drug trafficking, as a "delinquent who converted to radical Islam." He said others in the cell indicated they wanted to return to "the land of jihad."

A statement from President François Hollande praised the police for the raids and said the state would continue to "protect the French against all terrorist threats."

Last month's firebombing of the grocery, in a Jewish neighbourhood in the Paris suburb of Sarcelles, occurred on Sept. 19, the same day a French satirical paper published crude caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. Anti-Western protests were also growing at the time against an anti-Islam film. One person was slightly injured, but the attack with a Yugoslav grenade came after a summer of what residents described as growing anti-Semitic threats.

"What happened in Sarcelles was just a start, or was just a test," Sammy Ghozlan, head of a French group that tracks anti-Semitism in the country, said. "Islamism is a force of influence and Islamists are going to seek out the weakest people to teach them to kill."

France, which has the largest Muslim population in Europe, is trying to contain the spread of a radical Islam hostile to Western influences. France has made similar anti-terrorism arrests before, only to release the suspects several days later without charges.

The prosecutor was careful not to draw direct links between Saturday's arrests and Mohamed Merah, a young Frenchman of Algerian descent who died in a shootout with police in March after the killings in the south of France. That attack terrorized the French Jewish community, which has since ramped up security in many parts of the country.

Merah had studied at an Islamist paramilitary camp in Pakistan and claimed ties to Al Qaeda. Molins said officials did not believe the men arrested Saturday had trained abroad, but cautioned that the investigation was ongoing.

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1267905--suspect-killed-in-shootout-during-arrest-of-suspected-jihadist-cell-in-france

This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/5395