Comes the news that another Islamist immigrant from Mali named Coulibaly has attacked another Jewish institution in France. The first one, Amedy Coulibaly, murdered four Jews at a kosher store in Paris on Jan. 9; this second one injured three soldiers yesterday as they protected a Jewish community center in Nice.
 Two soldiers on Jan. 20 stand outside the Jewish museum in Brussels where an Islamist killed four people in May 2014. |
Police say Moussa Coulibaly, about 30 years old, with a record of theft and violence, and apparently not related to Amedy, pulled a knife about 8 inches long out of a bag, injuring one soldier in the chin, one in the cheek, and one in the forearm.
Coincidentally, I left Nice about four hours before this attack and had passed by that Jewish center a few days earlier, in the course of a tour of Muslim-majority areas in ten cities across France and Belgium. Those travels brought me repeatedly in proximity to the heavily armed soldiers who protect Jewish institutions and prompted several skeptical conclusions on my part about their presence:
- They are soldiers, not police, and so not trained to be alert to street problems.
- They tend to get distracted by their smartphones or pretty girls passing by.
- They clutch their assault rifles across their bodies, which leaves them vulnerable to someone driving by and shooting at them.
- As confirmed by today's attack, the ostensible protection they offer actually provokes Islamists and other antisemites.
- They are only posted temporarily to the Jewish institutions in the aftermath of the Hyper Cacher attack a month ago and before long will leave.
- They protect only the institutions themselves, not the people who come and go to them, who remain as vulnerable as ever.
 Two soldiers on Jan. 30 stand near the Grand Synagogue in Marseille. |
In short, the soldiers are sitting ducks whose deployment does little to protect the Jewish community or solve the larger problem of Islamist violence. But it does offer another instance of emotionally satisfying "security theater" which temporarily gives everyone a constructive sense of doing something.
 In contrast, the Kabbalah Center in Montpellier, France, did not have visible protection on Feb. 1. |
A real solution will require much deeper and longer-range steps that concern national identity, immigration policy, integration efforts, and effective policing.
Mr. Pipes (DanielPipes.org, @DanielPipes) is president of the Middle East Forum. © 2015 by Daniel Pipes. All rights reserved.
Feb. 4, 2015 addendum: A number of readers added valuable insights to the above analysis:
- A former French navy officer informs me that "If you asked a general why the soldiers did not shoot the attacker, he would dodge the question as he cannot lie but they could not shoot because the guns you see strapped on these soldiers has an empty magazine. It has no bullets! It's insane! Certain officers have a loaded magazine separately in a pouch, but not inserted in the gun. The only military personnel allowed to carry loaded weapons are the gendarmerie. All others, including soldiers, infantry, and even commandos are not allowed to carry loaded weapons. Because this is ridiculous, the government hides it."
- One reader wonders, even if the soldiers are armed, how prepared they are to shoot: Is the assault rifle round chambered or do they need to chamber a round first? Is the weapon on safe, requiring them to take the weapon off safe before they fire? Is the rifle set on auto fire or on semi-auto?
- William Mayer of PipeLineNews.org asks "why these soldiers apparently had little or no expertise in open hand combat. Disarming an opponent carrying a knife is rudimentary and taught (in the US) in boot camp. Even without weapons, three soldiers should have been able to handle a street thug armed with just a butcher knife." He noted on his website yesterday that "If the best and brightest of the country's anti-terror forces are incapable of stopping a simple assault by a man with a knife, there is little to prevent further attacks by Islamic fanatics. As a matter of fact the message of weakness being sent is one of provocation not steadfastness."
In addition, additional news has come out about Moussa Coulibaly, who is from Mantes-la-Jolie, roughly 30 miles west of Paris, and had been sentenced six times between 2003 and 2012 for crimes including theft, drug use, and verbally assaulting public officials; much of it reveals the ineptitude of the French security services:
- A sports club reported him to the police after he showed signs of "aggressive proselytizing." This included behaving coldly toward women and reproaching a man for showering naked. But the police did not put him under surveillance.
- He bought a one-way ticket to Turkey in early January. This, his behavior, and issues with his passport prompted an employee to notify Air France, which called the police. Nonetheless he was allowed to go to Turkey.
- French intelligence services asked the Turkish authorities to deport him immediately back to France, where on Jan. 28 he was questioned by counterterrorism officers, then released just days before the attack.
Feb. 13, 2015 update: Alain Leger provides important information on the soldiers guarding Jewish institutions, called Opération Sentinelle, at the online news site Dreuz:
- 10,412 soldiers in 154 units have guarded 722 Jewish schools and synagogues across France.
- They guarded 200 of them around the clock, even when uninhabited.
- There have been 371 "incidents" involving the soldiers – details not provided.
- There were 14 "serious aggressions" using knives, laser, and crosses."
- The Defense Ministry has concluded that standing makes the soldiers too vulnerable, so they will become more mobile. Toward this end, the army has just rented 300 minivans.
- The soldiers have found their assignment difficult: walking nearly 30 kilometers every day in bullet-proof armor under rudimentary living conditions.
Mar. 5, 2015 update: The operation has been renamed Vigipirate and the 10,500 deployed soldiers are getting very tired says Jean-Hugues Matelly, head of the GendXXI professional association that represents France's military police. "The men are tired and this fatigue keeps accumulating. The risk is that this will lead to a lack of vigilance, which means that when a real attack comes we are not reactive and therefore unable to stop it." He also worries about accidents, such as soldiers not following proper safety measures: "The slightest mistake could have dramatic consequences for the French people." Frédéric Lagache, deputy secretary general of the National Police Alliance union, concurs: "They are standing for several hours in their bulletproof vests. They are not robots, they will not be able to take several [more] months." Comment: With all due sympathy for the soldiers, one does have to worry how they would stand up in war.
Apr. 10, 2015 update: Another sitting duck, this time a soldier patrolling Paris' Orly Airport, who was injured by a man who attacked with a knife and then fled.
July 5, 2015 update: Charles Pasqua, a former French minister of the interior who died on June 29, asserted in his final interview that the soldiers protecting Jewish and other institutions carried guns without ammunition.
Jan. 1, 2016 update: An attack on soldiers protecting a mosque in Valence, France, shows that, at least in the aftermath of the Paris attacks on Nov. 13, the soldiers are armed because one of them fired and wounded the attacker in the arm and the leg.
Mar. 25, 2016 update: Further confirmation about soldiers' guns not having bullets comes from Brussels in the aftermath of the Mar. 22 jihadi attacks there, killing 28 and wounding 330: A Brussels rabbi, Menachem Hadad, reports in JTA's words
that soldiers who were posted outside a synagogue and the city's Chabad House following the slaying of four Jews in Brussels' Jewish Museum of Belgium in 2014 told him that for months, they used to guard the area with no bullets in their rifles. "It was just a show. It's not normal."
Mar. 18, 2017 update: When Zyed Ben Belgacem decided to "die for Allah" at Orly airport in Paris, he attacked a female air force soldier on patrol. Her colleagues then shot Belgacem dead, suggesting that at least some soldiers dispose of ammunition.
Dec. 3, 2017 update: Deploying so many soldiers on the streets of Europe's cities has, critics say, sapped the ability of their militaries to fight wars. For details, read here.
