Thursday, May 7, 2015

Exclusive Translation from Hebrew: One Woman’s battle against radical Islam - Pazit Rabina



by Pazit Rabina

Translated from Hebrew by Sally Zahav
 



When Latifa ibn-Ziaten’s son, a French-Moroccan soldier, was murdered three years ago in a terror attack in Toulouse, she decided to track down the murderer. Since then, she has been educating Muslim youths from immigrant neighborhoods in France to know the “other” and has even visited Israel with them. “I will do anything to stop the next murderer”, she says


Latifa ibn-Ziaten from France is the missing link. Against the burgeoning European anti-Semitism she offers a way to penetrate the wall of hatred that has grown in the immigrant neighborhoods in the suburbs of Paris. Yes, she is Muslim. And no, don’t let her traditional head covering mislead you: ibn-Ziaten is deeply imbedded within the French experience. This courageous woman, by means of the NGO that she established, offers a difficult but effective way to cope long-term with the well-oiled ISIS propaganda machine. And in addition, to give the French a way to raise their eyes, to look at themselves in the mirror and say that not all is lost for the republic. 

How did it all begin? Until three years ago Latifa ibn-Ziaten was an anonymous woman from Morocco who immigrated to France at a young age, became a citizen, married, started a family and quietly, contentedly, reared five children. The process of socialization for her and her family reached a highpoint when her eldest son Imad enlisted in the French army and took a paratroopers’ training course. In a photograph with a red beret it’s difficult to tell the difference between him and an IDF soldier.

And then everything exploded. In March 2002, Muhammad Merah, an unemployed youth from Toulouse, undertook a murderous mission. Merah, the son of an immigrant family from North Africa with a criminal past, returned to France after a long journey in Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Middle East and Bosnia. During his travels he became radicalized in al-Qaida training camps, where he was trained for the murderous attack in Toulouse. His first victims were two soldiers in the town of Mountauban, near Paris. One of them was Imad, ibn-Zaitan’s son. Merah, riding on a motorcycle, shot him and his friend point blank. 

What happened there in the moments before the murder is well known. The terrorist Merah’s Go-Pro camera, mounted on his chest, documented everything exactly in chilling detail.

“Are you a soldier?” he asked Imad, “Are you in the army?” he did not wait for an answer.
“Lie down – face down”, he commanded.

Imad did not move.

“I am not joking with you”, the armed Merah screamed at him. “Face down”.

But Imad refused.

“I am not going to lie face down” Imad responded finally. “If you mean to shoot me, go ahead, shoot”.

A second afterward a shot was heard. Imad fell to the ground lying in a pool of his blood. In the recording were heard calls of “Allahu Akbar” again and again and more gunshots, and then Merah turned the motorcycle around and fled the scene.

At this point, the police already knew about Merah, the motorcycle and the weapon. He was also being tracked by French intelligence. But they had not connected the dots in time. In the pursuit that was initiated following the murder of the soldiers – Merah was ahead of them. Two days afterward he had already identified the next target. His victims were five Jewish children of the Torah Treasure School from Toulouse. Merah ambushed them outside of the gate of the school and shot them one after another. 

This week, three years and two months after the murder in Toulouse, I met ibn-Ziaten at a reception in her honor in the house of Patrick Maisonnave, the French ambassador in Israel. The atmosphere on the balcony by the sea in Yaffo was almost like home. We shook hands. She proved to be an impressive woman of disarming simplicity and a way with words. 

This is her second visit to Israel, this time, in connection with the Imad ibn-Ziaten for the Youth and Peace NGO, which she established in memory of her son. She was accompanied by 17 children and youths, the youngest of them nine years old. All of them are children of French immigrant families. Their educational journey in Israel was entitled “Living Together”. A sort of “Birthright” journey – but in the opposite direction: its goal is to bring the message back to Europe, to penetrate the immigrant neighborhoods, the wall of ignorance, hatred and crime by means of the direct experiences that they were exposed to during the visit.

Easy prey in the neighborhoods

This journey to Israel is the climax of a deep personal process that began forty days after the murder of her son Imad, ibn-Ziaten explains. “I felt then that I could no longer sit at home. I had to get to the place where I Imad was murdered and to memorialize him in some way. A friend suggested that I establish an NGO”, she recalls.

“My husband and the children did not want me to go to the place, but I insisted”, ibn-Ziaten recounts. “I came there but did not find anything except a blood stain. I felt a terrible emptiness. I screamed. I yelled loudly.  I hoped that someone would come. A policeman, perhaps. Maybe a taxi driver. No one came. At that moment I felt that I must see where Muhammad Merah came from. Where the one who murdered my son grew up”.

Ibn-Ziaten continued and described how she came to the immigrant neighborhood where the one who murdered her son lived. “I searched and I asked about Muhammad Merah. And then some youths approached me and said to me: ‘Say, don’t you read the newspapers? Don’t you know who Muhammad Merah is? He is a martyr. He is a shaheed. He is a hero. He got France back on her feet”.

“At that moment”, ibn-Ziaten acknowledges, I felt that they were murdering Imad again. I turned to these youths and said: ‘Merah murdered my son’, and they answered me: ‘We are sorry that you are Imad’s mother. If Muhammad had known that Imad was Muslim, he would not have murdered him’. I answered them ‘Muslim or not – you don’t take someone’s life. Muhammad Merah was no martyr and no hero. He was a murderer’. Their answer was: ‘But France has forgotten us. France has not given us anything”.

Shocked and hurting, ibn-Ziaten decided that she must do something. I decided that I must work with these youths to prevent the next Muhammad Merah. I understood that I must help them so that there would not be another mother to feel that pain that I feel today”.

What is the main problem of these youths that would create the next murderer?

 “These youths come from broken families, some are criminals; they have no values and no education. When I came to France at the age of 17 from Morocco, we were a poor family but rich in values. I brought up five wonderful children.  But the children in the immigrant neighborhoods did not get the warmth, the love and the education that Imad and my children had. They grow up in a ghetto of immigrants with the feeling that they have no place in French society. They say that when they go out, they are checked all the time and are asked for their identification card. They feel that they are suspected and disparaged”.

Ibn-Ziaten explains that this situation is fertile ground for the development of the next murderer. “When people grow up without education, with a feeling of deprecation and when there is no joy in their hearts – it is very easy to fill them with hatred. They are easy prey for someone who wants to penetrate their hearts and spread hatred. That’s why we must work with them from a young age. To open the immigrant neighborhoods to the wider world and break down the wall of hatred before it is built”.

After three years of living this matter personally, can you identify the moment when Muhammad Merah became a murderer?

“Yes. The moment when he was put into French prison.  This is where he became radicalized. French prison is a dangerous place. The young people who are put in prison find themselves totally alone, they almost don’t sleep, they go mad, they are exposed to hatred in the prison and when they leave it they are much more dangerous to society”.

Battling ignorance

Ibn-Ziaten’s assessments are the same conclusions that the French authorities came to following the slaughter of the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo and the carnage at the kosher market in Paris. That indeed, the main process of radicalization that the attackers, Amedy Coulibaly and the Kouachi brothers underwent, had its roots in the French prison. That is where they also became acquainted with each other and were exposed to the indoctrination of hatred from Islamist preachers. The process that ibn-Ziaten is now trying to inculcate, is not only intended to prevent them from getting to prison, but also to provide them with social tools to become acquainted with the “other”, Israel and the Jews and to immunize them before they are exposed to the malignant hatred. And this is not at all simple to do. Arthur Butbul, who immigrated to Israel two years ago from France, and studies today in the Mikve Yisrael school, met ibn-Ziaten’s delegation of children, who are children of French immigrants. “These are totally normal children”, he says, “but even they did not know anything about Israel. Nothing at all. They had never heard about Operation Protective Edge, hadn’t heard about the tunnels, did not know what kassam rockets are. They thought it is a desert here, that Israelis are all racists, that there is segregation between Jews and Arabs and that Israelis are busy all day long killing Palestinians. From their point of view, everything is Gaza. This is what they absorb from their surroundings, especially from television. The visit here has opened their eyes and has done them only good”, says Butbul. 

It was a complex journey for those youths. Along with a meeting people of their own age, they also visited the Western Wall, Yad vaShem, the Temple Mount and the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. Their exposure to the Palestinian side was important and proved itself – especially so that they would see with their own eyes that the reality on the ground is different and much more complex than the one-dimensional mental picture that had been built up in their minds before the visit here.

I asked them if they would like to visit again. “Of course”, they answered, “It’s fun here”. On their return, the youths are expected to go from school to school and talk about what they saw. This is no small thing. They are now small soldiers in the war against ignorance and anti-Semitism and for tolerance. In Israel of 2015, which does not enjoy the kind of public relations benefits of Israel in 1948, Exodus, Paul Newman and the romantic idea of the kibbutz – it is a big thing. It is indeed a big thing.

The past three years have not been easy for Latifa ibn-Ziaten. Her work has taken her all over France and beyond. This process has also created a sense of closeness between ibn-Ziaten and the Jewish community. Last January, after the shooting attack at Charlie Hebdo and the kosher market, when France was shaken to the depths of its soul, one of the emotional high points was the candle lighting in a Paris synagogue. Two women lit 17 Candles were lit in memory of the victims. One of them had a traditional Jewish head-covering and the other had a traditional Muslim head-covering. The first was Eva Sandler, whose husband Yonatan and two sons, Aryeh and Gavriel, were murdered by Muhammad Merah. The other woman, the Muslim one, was ibn-Ziaten. She had planned to fly that week-end to Morocco to a sport event on behalf of handicapped children, but she ultimately chose to participate in the memorial ceremony.

Do you see Muhammad Merah as the first in a series of terrorists from what we today call ISIS?

It doesn’t matter. At that time, we did not know what ISIS is. We still don’t know the word ISIS. Then, there was al-Qaeda, today there is ISIS. We must be careful; we must close ranks and work with all our strength against radicalization and barbarism”. 



Pazit Rabina

Source: Makor Rishon Newspaper, Yoman section, issue 925, 1-5-2015, pg. 10

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

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