Two bereaved parents in France speak out
Dark days in France! A remarkable meeting in a television studio between the Chief Rabbi of Tunis, whose son, Yoav, was gunned done in Paris by a terrorist, and a Muslim French woman, whose son was murdered by a terrorist too.
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Bearded, wearing a yarmulke and speaking in a voice made gravelly by exhaustion and grief, Rabbi Hattab sat in the Paris television studio opposite Latifa Ibn Ziaten, a Moroccan-born French woman, who wore a traditional Muslim headscarf. He described his son as a young man who lived his life joyfully and with respect for his Jewish heritage. He only happened to be at the grocery store that Friday because he had been invited for Shabbat dinner and his father had taught him always to bring a bottle of wine as a gift for his hosts.
Mrs. Ibn Ziaten listens, her expression deeply sympathetic. Her son Imad, then a 30-year-old career soldier in the French army, was killed in 2011 by a French citizen who had become a radical Islamist. In March 2011 Mohamed Merah went on a shooting rampage starting with Imad Ibn Ziaten, whom he shot at point-blank range after the paratrooper refused to kneel down. Merah killed seven people altogether, including three children at the local Jewish school.
