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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