Ten years after France was rocked by a series of Islamist shootings targeting Jewish children and French soldiers, President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday joined two of his predecessors – Nicolas Sarkozy and François Holland – along with Israeli President Isaac Herzog, in Toulouse for a sombre ceremony to remember the victims.
Seven people were slain in March 2012 when radicalised “scooter killer” Mohamed Merah, 23, opened fire on uniformed soldiers before fronting up at a Jewish school, where he shot dead a rabbi and his two children. He then turned his weapon on a third child.
The shooting spree – the first of a wave of terrorist attacks that have since traumatised France – began on 11 March in the south-western city of Toulouse, where 30-year-old soldier Imad Ibn-Ziaten was murdered after placing an online ad to sell a motorbike.
Four days later, off-duty soldiers Abel Chennouf, 24, and Mohamed Legouad, 26, were killed in a drive-by attack while withdrawing money outside their barracks in the nearby town of Montauban. Another soldier suffered debilitating injuries.
🕯️It's been 10 years since the terrorist attack on the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school in Toulouse. Four people lost their lives on March 19, 2012, including three children. It left a deep scar on Jews as they experienced rising antisemitic violence.
— WJC (@WorldJewishCong) March 18, 2022
May their memories be a blessing. pic.twitter.com/YpBxxiEAMw
Merah, still at large, on 19 March then drove his Yamaha scooter to Toulouse’s Ozar Hatorah Jewish school, where he murdered 30-year-old teacher Jonathan Sandler and his sons, six-year-old Arié and three-year-old Gabriel.
The headmaster’s daughter, eight-year-old Miriam Monsonego, was also gunned down at point-blank range outside the school gates as she arrived for class. Merah shot her repeatedly. A 17-year-old boy was wounded but survived.
The week of horror culminated in Merah's death at the hands of France's elite special RAID forces, who shot him dead on 22 March following a 32-hour siege at his Toulouse home.
Deep scars
The tragic events of 2012 – which came well before the attacks on Charlie Hebdo journalists, a Hypercacher supermarket in Paris and the atrocities of November 2015 that killed 130 people – left a deep scar on France’s Jewish community.
"We must do everything possible to ensure it doesn't happen again," Laurent Raynaud, a teacher at the since renamed Ohr Torah school told France Info radio, adding that issues of discrimination, racism and anti-Semitism must no longer be considered taboo subjects.
As part of a day of commemorations Sunday, some 2,000 people were expected to attend ceremonies organised by the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (Crif).
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A small tribute took place at the Ohr Torah school, where Yaacov Monsenego, Miriam’s father, is still the headmaster.
He met with Macron, Herzog and their wives following a wreath-laying ceremony at the foot of the school's Tree of Life, a monument to the victims.
"On this sad anniversary we pay tribute to the victims. Imad, Mohamed, Abel, Myriam, Gabriel, Arié, Jonathan. All united against barbarism," Toulouse Deputy Mayor Souhayla Marty wrote in a tweet.
Elsewhere in the city, round table talks involving Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo were held to discuss secularism and the values of the French republic.
A large-scale commemorative ceremony was to take place later in the afternoon, opening with a series of readings interspersed with music.
