Toulouse Killer Raised To Be Anti-Semitic: Brother
Image by getty images
Abdelghani Merah has written in a book that his brother, Mohamed, was raised to be an anti-Semite long before he killed four Jews in Toulouse.
“My young brother was certainly a Salafist, but before he turned into one he grew up in this detestable atmosphere that accommodates anti-Semitism,” Abdelghani Merah reportedly has written in a new book about his brother set to appear this week.
Mohammed Merah gunned down three children and a rabbi on March 19 at a Jewish school. In a series of attacks that he committed earlier that month, he killed three French soldiers. A police marksman killed Merah during a police raid on Merah’s home, as Merah tried to jump out of the bathroom window.
The Merahs grew up with a “cultural anti-Semitism” and “despised the Jews,” Abdelghani Merah wrote in his book, according to a report in the French magazine Le Point.
Souad and Kader Merah, two siblings of Mohammed and Abdelghani Merah, “hated the infidels and particularly the Jews, without any distinctions,” Abdelghani Merah reportedly wrote.
Merah and his brother spent their summer vacations in Algeria, their parents’ land of origin. “The vast majority of our paternal family were supporters of FIs and GIA,” two militant Islamist groups.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news. All donations are still being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000 until April 24.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
