Building Sparks Preservation Movement
In Upstate New York, residents are clamoring to raze down their Government Center, Paul Rudolph’s classic 1970 example of brutalist design. Ostensibly, this is due to flood-damage. But it can’t hurt that, as one resident was quoted in The New York Times as saying, it’s “a big ugly building.” In Minnesota, city officials would rather tear down M. Pau…
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Mohammed Merah and Toulouse
Mohammed Merah, 23, was identified as the man suspected in the methodical killings of seven unarmed people in Toulouse , France, over a period of 10 days in March 2012. He died on March 22 when he jumped out a window, firing a weapon, during a raid and shootout that ended a 30-hour standoff with the police. Mr. Merah was described as a French national of…
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Airbrushing Hate out of Toulouse
Like Jews across the world, I was shocked, sickened and frightened by the senseless murder of a rabbi and three small children in France last week. With the end of Mohammed Merah’s life came the start of an operation on the psychosis that drove him to murder with such callousness. Analysts and political pundits attempting to establish cause and motive have …
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Boy Beaten in Anti-Semitic Attack
A 12-year-old boy was beaten outside his Jewish school in Paris by youths reciting anti-Semitic slogans, school officials said, amid high security and tensions in France following killings of Jewish children and a rabbi last week. The boy did not suffer serious injuries. Both the school shooting and this week's beating involved the Ozar Hatorah network …
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How Mohammed Merah took up Jihad
Mohammed Merah had plenty of stamps in his passport, according to French intelligence officials. He traveled through at least seven Middle Eastern and central Asian countries on his way to Afghanistan in 2010. It was a meandering journey that might have been a metaphor for a young man in search of a purpose and identity. But it's also clear that by the…
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