France, and the rest of the world, is still reeling from the shock of events in Toulouse, where a lone gunman killed a teacher and three children at a local Sephardic Jewish school on March 19. In the coming days, all of us ardently hope that we will learn not about another massacre, but instead of the capture of the killer.
But in the confusion and uncertainty of the moment, it is important to recall what we know, and what we don’t know, about this event.
What do we know? First of all, the murders in Toulouse are of a piece with two separate recent killings in the neighboring city of Montauban. In those earlier incidents, a single gunman atop a scooter shot three French soldiers on public thoroughfares. He killed with the same weapon and same sangfroid that the gunman in Toulouse displayed. The killings were deliberate and systematic; according to one French criminal psychologist, the killer seems to be “on a mission.”
We also know that the three murdered soldiers were of North African descent; a wounded fourth soldier is from the Caribbean. These earlier killings, of course, stunned France; to the everlasting credit of the country’s republican faith, the ethnic backgrounds of the soldiers were not emphasized; instead the men were portrayed, rightly, as Frenchmen serving France.
In addition, we know that since 2005 the French government has made strenuous efforts to protect Jewish institutions and buildings, in particular schools and day care centers. This policy was put into effect after a vicious spate of anti-Semitic activities in France: desecration of cemeteries, vandalism of synagogues and physical assaults against observant Jews. These attacks, a number of which were the work of young men of North African descent, also gave rise to claims concerning the “new anti-Semitism.” In essence, this political stance affirms that critics of Israel are, in fact, stealth anti-Semites who hide their true beliefs behind their attacks on the Jewish state.
However much it may appear indecent to raise such matters so soon after these tragic events, there is one thing more we know: French politicians, particularly on the right, have repeatedly conjured in recent years the specter of a Muslim menace threatening France. Ever since taking office in 2007, President Nicolas Sarkozy had sought (and succeeded) in outlawing the wearing in public of the Muslim burqa, sought (and ultimately failed) to establish a Ministry of National Identity (an effort that made French Jews, aware of their nation’s past complicity in the Final Solution, deeply uncomfortable), and has sought (and not yet succeeded) in introducing a law that would strip citizenship from naturalized Frenchmen found guilty of serious crimes.
Sarkozy’s minister of the Interior, Claude Guéant, quickly declared that all of France mourns the death of these Frenchmen. At the same time, he ordered the reinforcement of security at Muslim institutions. All this marks a happy departure from Prime Minister Raymond Barre’s reaction in 1980 to the bombing of the synagogue on Rue Copernic, when he denounced an attack that struck not just French Jews, “but innocent Frenchmen crossing the street.”
Yet, all of France knows that Guéant, whose ministry also oversees immigration and religion, has in recent months fired off a series of incendiary claims concerning French Muslims. In February, in a speech to a right-wing student organization, he declared that “all civilizations are not equal,” creating a firestorm in France.
Though Guéant did not identify these lesser civilizations, the two examples he then offered — the wearing of the veil and recitation of prayers on public streets — made it all too clear that he did not have the Inuit in mind. Earlier in March, Guéant also predicted that if France granted the vote to foreigners legally residing in France, the French would be forced to eat halal meat in school and office cafeterias, another controversy that had dominated the French media.
Until, that is, the awful events in Toulouse and Montauban.
To many observers, Guéant’s remarks, along with Sarkozy’s affirmation that “we have too many foreigners in France,” were aimed at halting the slow but steady hemorrhage of conservative voters toward the xenophobic Front National of Marine Le Pen. We do not know if these ugly political calculations would have worked, just as we do not know if the events of the past two weeks will work to Sarkozy’s favor. It is worth noting, however, that with just five weeks left before an election he appeared to be losing, Sarkozy now has the occasion at a moment of national crisis to play not the candidate but the president.
There are two other important things we don’t know. As I write, we still don’t know the killer’s identity or his motivation. Second, and this is something we can never know, is the mind of someone who, at close range and with sangfroid, can aim a gun at innocent men and children and pull the trigger again and again.
But we must know what these three related acts of homicidal fury aimed at French Jews and Muslims make clear: They are two communities that, vulnerable yesterday and today to stigmatization and discrimination, have more in common than they sometimes believe. As last year’s horrific massacre in Norway reminds us, the West has no need to seek monsters abroad: We have, all too unhappily, the capacity to create our own.
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