Did UN worker’s anti-Israel tweet provoke Mohammed Merah to murder?
MOHAMMED Merah is the man suspected of murdering four Jews - three of them young children – in Toulouse. Mohammed Merah is a 24-year-old French citizen of Algerian extraction, self-declared Islamist warrior and member of the al-Qaeda network, linked to banned Islamist group Forsane Alizza (Knights of Pride), and once arrested in the Afghan city of Kandahar.
Did Mohammed Merah murder Jewish children because little over week earlier, on March 12, UN worker Khulood Badawi posted a photo of a cloodied child on @KhuloodBadawi? Did it play a part in his thinking? (She has since taken it down, later writing: “Correction: I tweeted the photo believing it was from the last round of violence & it turned out to be from 2006.”)
Her original caption read:
Long Live Palestine – Palestine is bleeding – Another child killed by #Israel..Another father carrying his child to the grace in #Gaza.
The child turned out ot one Raja Abu Shaban, who died after a playground accident in Gaza on August 9, 2006.
Khulood Badawi works at OCHA – the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The UN says she works as an Information and Media Coordinator.
When a person in a position of influence uses a false image to illustrate her point, what effect does it have? Does it reaffirm prejudices? Does it inspire acts of righteous violence?
Israel’s UN Ambassador Ron Prosor demands action:
“We have before us an OCHA information officer who was directly engaged in spreading misinformation. When the conduct of an OCHA employee so grossly deviates from the organization’s responsibility to remain impartial, the integrity of the entire organization is eroded. The credibility of OCHA is already seriously in doubt among the Israeli public. This is why immediate action in this case is necessary.”
Prosor says Khulood Badawi “actively engaged in the demonization of Israel, a member state of the United Nations. Such actions contribute to incitement, conflict and, ultimately, violence.”
“Ms. Badawi stands in complete violation of articles 100 and 101 of the UN Charter.”
The UN states:
Article 100
In the performance of their duties the Secretary-General and the staff shall not seek or receive instructions from any government or from any other authority external to the Organization. They shall refrain from any action which might reflect on their position as international officials responsible only to the Organization. Each Member of the United Nations undertakes to respect the exclusively international character of the responsibilities of the Secretary-General and the staff and not to seek to influence them in the discharge of their responsibilities.
Article 101
The staff shall be appointed by the Secretary-General under regulations established by the General Assembly. Appropriate staffs shall be permanently assigned to the Economic and Social Council, the Trusteeship Council, and, as required, to other organs of the United Nations. These staffs shall form a part of the Secretariat. The paramount consideration in the employment of the staff and in the determination of the conditions of service shall be the necessity of securing the highest standards of efficiency, competence, and integrity. Due regard shall be paid to the importance of recruiting the staff on as wide a geographical basis as possible.
The UN likes to big itself up as the bastion of honest brokering and human rights. But is it? Does Khulood Badawi and her position inflame passions. Did the UN workers tweet lead to murder?
Claude Guéant, the France Interior Minister, says:
“He [Merah]is talking a lot and he is very explicit about his reasons for attacking the school and says it was to avenge Palestinian children.”
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French President Nicolas Sarkozy, center, with Education Minister Philippe Chatel, right, and their unidentified head teacher, left, with pupils of the Francois Couperin College in Paris, France, hold a minute of silence in their school, Tuesday , March 20, 2012, the day after a gunman on a motorbike opened fire Monday at a Jewish school in the French city of Toulouse, southwestern France, killing a rabbi and his two young sons as they waited for a bus, then chased down a 7 -year-old girl, shooting her dead at point-blank range. It was the latest in a series of attacks on minorities that have raised fears of a racist killer on the loose. (AP Photo/Jacques Brinon Pool)
May 4th, 2012 at 8:37 am
Mods – can you please place the posts in order? this doesn’t make sense at the moment!! cheers ;-
Moderator – we are having blips, but Paul Sinclair was removed last night, you shouldn’t have been able to read it this a.m
May 4th, 2012 at 8:36 am
paul sinclair – if you had bothered to read my posts properly, you would have realised that there is nothing racist about them at all. My comments concern the problems created by social networking and the silly rantings of other posters who use the forum to portray their own very biased views. I don’t have a bias either way, but that fact has obviously gone straight over your head.
if you are going to make a comment, at least make it a sensible one – or better still, go and find a different website where you don’t get so easily upset by others with views which are obviously different to your own….
oh yes – and make sure you read the stuff accurately, won’t you….?
ciao ciao
March 25th, 2012 at 6:11 am
It is well known, Communism and Nazism are cruel, totalitarian ideologies. Both were created and welcomed perverted sociopaths and racists. The two sides of the same coin had the same morbous obsessions about controlling, bullying, killing innocent people. Both, still alive and kicking are expert on intolerance, hate propaganda and able to lie to muddying the waters. Both sides deny Israel the right to live as a Jewish State at his own Ancient Jewish Kingdom.. based on? No, you do not know…and you reject to learn it, you are simply part of a crowd of useful idiots that brought by their noses choose to ignore the truth and stay standing on prejudice. Maybe it’s time to let it down you do not need to be part of this lethal scam. Why to be the infected infatuated to this endless tantrum.
Let stop this Islamist Takiyya, it is time to discover the truth.
Islamics are the surviving partners of Hitler demential regime. They were close allies and shared their morbous ideology and crimes against humanity. We must stop that.The UN can not be their nest.
March 22nd, 2012 at 7:49 pm
Where is the link between the photo and Merah?
You do realise that Israel carried out four days of air strikes on Gaza just over a week ago? Surely that’s a more likely link, given that children definitely were killed.
Also, with his reputation, he’s probably seen many of these pictures – they’re regularly used by activists.
March 22nd, 2012 at 3:17 pm
@Smythe – you are obscuring the facts by repeating lies. The facts – Badawi posed an six year old picture and represented it as recent; Badawi stated that the child was killed by Israeli police – not true; Badawi is a UN aid worker, she has responsibility for humane and ethical conduct – personal accounts are not an excuse for spreading vicious lies. Smythe, your views are coloured by your obvious racist views.
March 22nd, 2012 at 11:55 am
Well, it looks like the suspect is dead. I can’t remember a case in French history, going back to the days of the OAS in the 60′s, where some convenient Arab terrorist suspect didn’t die in a hail of bullets before he/they were brought to trial. They will no doubt be trawling the dead case files to find what else they can pin on him
March 22nd, 2012 at 8:54 am
…the same ilk as Khulood Badawi who tweeted fauxtography from the UN, and may as well be equally responsible for Toulouse Massacre since they both perpetrate the fraud of “Palestinian suffering.”
lINK – jihadwatch.org/2012/03/man-claiming-to-be-jihad-shooting-suspect-called-france-24-was-adamant-it-was-beginning-of-larger-ca.html#comment-867043
March 22nd, 2012 at 8:46 am
Major Tom here, Winker – and I am certainly nothing to do with them at all! it was probably more to do with having a bit more time on my hands than usual on a Wednesday afternoon…
my point was about social networking, I really can’t be arsed to read through the pro-Israeli, anti-Palestinian diatribe submitted by Luna, I’m afraid I just switch off…. But I did have a chuckle at Anama’s protestations of the victimisation of an “innocent” State… such blinkered views..
it illustrates my point perfectly – social networking can, unfortunately, become a platform for the rantings of web warriors, who in the decades before its invention would have remained (mercifully) anonymous and unheard…
March 21st, 2012 at 10:32 pm
dairy – you gone all AWOL on us? Or are you a cousin of Luna, Milano or Anama? Or have you been hacked?
Ground Control to Major Tom.
March 21st, 2012 at 10:23 pm
dairy – I cannot tell whether you have been hacked or not? Or if you are a cousin of Luna (he/she lost me completely by-the-way), Milano and Anama.
Ground Control to Major Tom.
March 21st, 2012 at 8:56 pm
This representative of the UN falsified the picture data to enrage and provoke hatred against Israel. The anti-Israeli world campaign is based on lies. There is no justification to continue the charade. Is common knowledge, easily verifiable the fact that in Israel the assumed Palestinians are not victimized. The Arabs and Socialists must now give up this shameful patroness against an innocent State and innocent people around the world.
Khulood Badawi must be prosecuted and the UN must fired her in clear terms. She elaborated and publicized a complete fabrication for the purpose. Miss Badawi using an fake image to blame Israel.The incitement against Israel and Jews engaged in their demonization is a mistaken incitement.
March 21st, 2012 at 8:01 pm
The dangerous obsession of getting a “bloodied child” image, no matter the cost
Determined to use its “successful” vicious ugly inflaming tactics, again and again, bent on posting a bloodied image, the Arab-Islamic “Palestinians” or Hezbollah will cause somehow for children to die, when not successful, it will “produce” an image. Such as the mentioned Khuloood Badawi typical case of turning an accident into a “crime.” From the moment of spreading a vile photo, to getting an Arab-Muslim murderer ‘ready’ to commit the crimes against humanity, it is instant.
March 21st, 2012 at 6:37 pm
After the animalistic crime by Islamofascist in Toulouse. France – Now is the time to rebuke Euro anti-Israel biased and distorted media
As we learn now about the atrocious murderous crime in Toulouse, France, on March 19 – ‘Jewish school massacre,’ where -among others- the killer chased little 8 years old Miriam Monsonego, after she already bled to death, he picked her up and shot her again in the head, making sure she dies. All his victims were killed with bullets to the head, shot at such close range that the gunfire burned the skin. He also filmed the attack for self sick-kicks. Mohammed Merah clarified, he is an al-Qaeda / Forsane-Azziza proud jihadist, and seeks to “avenge” so-called ‘Palestinian deaths.’
___
Now, more than ever is exactly the time to speak out against distortion in MSM especially in European media, where the Israeli victim is being portrayed as the “aggressor.”
You won’t find in European media any pointing fingers at Arab-Islamic initiators of attacks upon Israeli civilians, AKA Hamas, Hezbollah, or even “moderate” Fatah’s ‘Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade,’ etc. Nor does the Euro-media ever bother to explain/show how the Arab Muslim “fighters” hold their civilian population hostage, how it shoots from among densely population, or even behind women’s squirts and little kids’ shoulders. Their strategy is clear, to bring about as many as Arabs’ deaths as possible. So, that an “outcry” shall come out raging, hatred for Israel/Jews will rise, and inflamed recruits will knock on its jihadi death-cult doors. Yet, all this wasn’t even once the subject in media.
While Arab hospitals’ images are constantly streaming live, Israeli hospitals where Israeli victims of Arab racist attacks are being hospitalized, are virtually nonexistent on the European news screen.
The 4 possible reasons for European anti-Israel bias:
1.) The Euro complex of guilt, after being complicit or even aiding in Nazi Germany’s annihilation of 6 Million people for the sole reason of pertaining to Jews (/Hebrews/Israelites). The urge to find flaws among Jews, thus, to somehow justify its past, as sick as it sounds.
2.) The creepy appeasement to its large Arab-Islamic immigrant population. The illusion that if we Europeans will just show more anti-Israelism, we’ll see more calm in the Arab boiling street.
3.) Arab-Muslim employees in Euro media.
4.) The “competition” with the US. Still seeing as the “bully.” Thus, Israel, being US’ ally, its name needs to be tarnished. [The basic policy of Hugo Chavez when it comes to the M.E.].
Clarity: The massacre typifies the root – not the “cause” of the conflict.
No, it’s not about “land” or about “rights.” (Nevermind that Arabs/Muslims, often enjoy more rights than Jews in the democratic Jewish State) It’s about hatred. Always was.
From the WSJ: Muslim Judeophobia is not as is commonly claimed a reaction to the Mideast conflict but one of its main “root causes.” It has been fueling Arab rejection of a Jewish state long before Israel’s creation.
I remember vividly, how the Obsession movie exposing Radical Islam’s war against the West was banned at the time in France. Yet, hitting on the cause of the “conflict” is so vital.
Just as PalWatch and MEMRI expose constantly the mainstream venemous demonization of Israelis, if not of all Jews, by Imams, official TV, and in children camps. Worth mentioning what the Syrian-Arab education minister said in 1968: “The hatred which we indoctrinate into the minds of our children is sacred.”
This racial (Arab racism) and religious (Islamofascism) hatred as the ’cause’ of the conflict needs to be talked about. The very root of the crimes on the Jewish people since the early 1920s’, which began by the infamous Mufti al-Husseini of ‘Palestine,’ who, in WW2, as he aided Hitler, called to kill all Jews as it pleases Allah. Already in 1918 he said the most important uttered statement about the Arabs Vs Israel conflict: “Nothing but the sword will decide the future of this country.” He was also believed (even by the British) already in 1938 to be the lonely one who founded the anti-Jewish war, as he was called then the ‘Hitler of the Near East.’ Or later on, the ‘Fuhrer of the Arab world.’
Targeting civilians Vs aiming at murderers
In order to repair some of the damage. It is imperative to elaborate for example IDF’s unparalleled record of sparing civilians in counter-terrorism operations. The recent vile comparison by Ashton epitomizes a sick problem much deeper, a widely held European adopted complete skewed image about Israeli’s defense Vs Arab-Islamic attacks. Of blurring images between targeting butchers and Arab-Islamic aiming at the unarmed, preferably kids. Such as the barrage of Qassam aimed at school children in Israel. In fact, going after little kids in their beds or in a home yard, or a school yard, is a “normal” Arab-Islamic routine. Such as Shalhevet Pass, Danielle Shefi, the Fogel Family, etc.
March 21st, 2012 at 4:50 pm
On a much less serious scale, I was reading an interview with JLS earlier (I keep an eye out for stuff to forward to my besotted daughter) and they were talking about Twits calling them gay. They said:
““If someone tweets something negative, the rest of the fans go in so hard on that person that no one really does it any more. It’s sad, though.
“It’s just someone who’s got nothing better to do with their life.””
March 21st, 2012 at 4:23 pm
it’s dangerous in the wrong hands, to the wrong minds… is the answer to shut down social networking? impossible…. the only way to address incidents like this is not to give them the air they feed on to become bigger and more significant than they actually are… we see it all the time – perceived offence, scrambling to get on the bandwagon, narrow minds conspiring to make the world conform to particular beliefs and nothing else, on pain of punishment or worse… manipulation and bias as never before.
not that long ago, a comment such as the above would not even have come to light and even if it had, would have been dismissed as one-sided or provocative and not worthy of consideration…. but today, people’s inner thoughts are translated into the written word and those who were never destined to write or comment in any shape or form are given a stage from which to shout their own personal message of hate in front of millions.. too many voices and too many opinions….
have we created a monster with social networking? or is it a useful and progressive way to keep people informed, all around the world? Yes to both. But having created the monster, we must find a way to manage it, or at least manage ourselves so as not to react in an extremist fashion to a perceived insult.
at the moment, we seem to be suffering from a large dose of extreme reaction, overblown and fired up by fear of the unfamiliar or unknown, whether that be people or beliefs. The more the extremists are ignored, the more impotent they will become – we just have to be brave enough to ignore them and deny them the oxygen they crave. I hope for a day when the majority have the courage and confidence in their own beliefs to allow others to have theirs, or even just be different, without beating the hell out of them first. Idealistic? yes, definitely – but positivity is an essential first step and I for one am trying my best to move forward.
March 21st, 2012 at 3:40 pm
Dairy – we’re repeatedly asked to show anyone on social networks for causing offence. A homophobic or racist tweet is tamped on. the tweeter is hauled over the media coals and put before the judge. In football, any sign of racism is sought out lest it spread like a contagion and make the fans race riot. So. this tweet about warzone. It’s dangerous, isn’t it..?
March 21st, 2012 at 3:37 pm
Winker, indeed. They must have missed him when he came home from a prison break in Afghanistan and then went to buys loads of guns and ammo…
March 21st, 2012 at 1:52 pm
Rubbish
1.Pictures and words bear no responsibility for anyones actions.You only have yourself to blame for anything you choose to do.
2.What did the aid worker do that was wrong,she was merely stating the reality of the situation on the ground.
3.The french SIS seem more concerned with provoking mayhem and murder in Syria and Libya.French foreign policy could be viewed as reaping what it sowed.Advocating violent and murderous intervention in sovereign(Islamic) nations is bound to provoke a reaction.
4.He was a lone gunman,a lunatic,nothing can be done to preempt the inexplicable.
March 21st, 2012 at 12:12 pm
Anorak – it looks more like a personal reaction to it than a party line… but if it was issued officially, then there is a fundamental problem with what is supposed to be an unbiased organisation – the only reason for its existence!
the UN is toothless, IMO, but there will always be those who want to seize such examples of carelessness to use for their own ends.
March 21st, 2012 at 12:04 pm
Anorak – how about an expose of the French SIS?
“The French government said its intelligence services had been tracking him for years”
March 21st, 2012 at 11:48 am
Dairy – Isn’t the UN tweet trypical of the UN’s views on Israel?
March 21st, 2012 at 11:48 am
It’s hypocritical for Israel to complain about her allegedly breaking UN rules when itself is breaking more serious international laws by having illegal settlements in Palestine.
This is her personal twitter account, she’s not tweeting on behalf of, or for, the OCHA. She entitled to her own views. She quickly corrected her mistake when made aware of her error.
Also, looking at the photo of the blooded corpse, and given Israel’s history of indiscriminate killings, i wonder if the child really died from a “playground accident”.
March 21st, 2012 at 11:30 am
this is such bollocks – as if any sane person would be moved to wreak murder and havoc after viewing a photo, unpleasant and tragic though it is. Nobody can shift the blame for these murders onto a random UN worker – does nobody take responsibility for their own thoughts and actions these days…???
March 21st, 2012 at 10:49 am
Well..?