France has belatedly woken up to the jihadist threat

French police outside the Paris kosher supermarket. (Photo: AFP)

The 2012 attack on a Jewish school in Toulouse were the writing on the wall, but France did not legislate for surveillance of terror suspects; protection of Jewish institutions in the republic has also been a failure.

France’s counter-terrorism units on Friday acted competently and with sophistication, and were even well-equipped for events in which hostages were taken. In both of Friday’s raids – at the print shop where the two Charlie Hebdo gunmen were holed up and the siege at the kosher supermarket in Paris – they systematically and diligently gathered intelligence, using closed circuit surveillance cameras and even a man hiding in the print shop to devise a plan of action. They had also placed door-breaching explosives in both locations, which helped them enter quickly when they did decide to do so.

Another wise decision was to storm both places simultaneously, to prevent both sets of hostage-takers from knowing via the media or by phone hacking that a raid had been carried out in the other location. So, a few minutes after the operation started in the town of Dammartin-en-Goele, forces stormed the supermarket in eastern Paris. The French Interior Ministry had issued a misleading message beforehand that it intended to negotiate the terrorists at both sites, and French television, lo and behold, agreed not to broadcast images of the troops preparing for the raids. Yes, there is such thing as responsible media.

Ingenuity, skill and practice paid off. Unfortunately, instances of terrorists barricaded in with hostages usually end in casualties. This time most of the victims were killed by the terrorist at the supermarket in Paris and not during the action to bring the siege to an end. This time, they were Jews.

The French Interior Ministry may perhaps be proud of both operations conducted in parallel to rescue the hostages, but that’s not what really matters. The main thing is not to allow such situations to arise at all – and here is where the French authorities can be found to be incompetent, if not unforgivably complacent.

There have been numerous murderous terrorist attacks in recent years on French citizens by Muslim fanatics who have returned from the Middle East. It was also apparent that jihad would continue to flow at an increasing rate from France and other European countries to the Middle East – and from there back to France and the rest of Europe, once the jihadists had been trained and brainwashed and left devoid of any tolerance for the values enshrined in Western democracies.

This is not a clash of civilizations, it is not even a clash of religions; it is rather an intolerance for any other values, in whose name it is possible to commit any crime. France already knew that well, long before the establishment of Islamic State.

Mohammed Merah – who in 2012 murdered four Jews at a Jewish school in Toulouse and killed a French soldier – was the writing on the wall. France is also involved, along with the United States, in action against radical Islam in the Middle East and Africa, and this makes it a target for revenge attacks by jihadists. In light of this, France should have long operated like the United States, making legislative changes to allow monitoring of all forms, including wiretapping and electronic surveillance of its citizens, even if it touched on individual rights to a certain degree.

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