November 12, 2012

(JTA) — 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.

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