Excerpted from JPost:
[...] the jihadism we are seeing today is the modern-day Nazism.
“Unfortunately, this same hatred has come to Toulouse, to Brussels and other places in Europe,” Mergui said.
French Islamist Mohammed Merah shot dead four people at a Jewish school in Toulouse in 2012, and Mehdi Nemmouche, also from France and suspected of having fought with the brutal Islamic State militia in the Syrian civil war, killed four people in a shooting attack at the Jewish Museum of Belgium in Brussels on May 24 this year.
“Jihadism is the Nazism of today and these people want to kill Jews and destroy the Jewish state,” Mergui said. “They are not succeeding, thank God, but we have a similar challenge in Diaspora.
“This hatred of Jews is a hatred of democracy, of the democratic, civilized world... It’s a war of ideologies, an ideology of death against freedom and democracy.”
Mergui described the rise in anti-Semitism in France as a serious problem, although he stopped short of saying there is a systemic threat to Jewish security in the country.
He said that anti-Zionist sentiment in the country was merely a pretext for anti-Semitism and that both extremist Muslim elements in the country and far-right nationalists were behind the rise in anti-Semitic incidents.
In what he described as the most concerning new development, Mergui said those expressing anti-Semitic hatred were no longer afraid to do so.
“We’ve reached a situation in which there are people who are not afraid or embarrassed to openly express their anti-Semitism,” he said, adding that they are not afraid of the police or prison either.
“All those who oppose the values of the republic and of democracy are no longer doing it hiding but are doing so without fear.
“They say death to the Jews, and we are all Mohammed Merah. These are things we’ve heard in Paris,” he exclaimed.
