Robert Spencer’s JihadWatch, this morning:
Gunman with “possible terrorist links” murders 4 outside Jewish school in France
Islamic antisemitism boiling over? Maybe…
Same post, this evening:
Not Found
The requested URL /2012/03/gunman-with-possible-terrorist-links-murders-4-outside-jewish-school-in-france.html was not found on this server.
Apparently, the answer to Spencer’s question is “maybe not”, and so he scrubbed the article without bothering to update his followers with the latest developments: there is reason believe that the killer may be part of a gang of ex-paratroopers who were dismissed in 2008 for neo-Nazi behaviour (details in Le Point, cited in English in other news-sites).
This is Spencer’s usual method when he’s made an accusation that turns out not to be true or to be doubtful: in 2009 he deleted a bogus story about a mass paedophile wedding in Gaza, and at the end of 2010 he removed an account about a man acting strangely on a plane to Malta – a report used by Spencer said the man was a Muslim, but he turned out to be a Caribbean Christian. There are probably other instances; Spencer apparently sees no ethical need to correct any false impression or inaccurate information he may have left his readers with.
As I wrote previously, any blogger dealing in current affairs is likely to make a mistake from time to time; but what separates a serious person from a charlatan or demagogue is how one attempts to put a mistake right.
As for the tragedy in Toulouse, it is of course reasonable to suspect a jihadist motive. However, Spencer was obviously writing in bad faith: that’s why he framed the suggestion as a Muslim “boiling over”, and that’s why he removed the article without explanation when he realised the killer might not be a Muslim.
Alas, Google cache doesn’t have a copy of the post, although a few lines currently remain visible on the Google search results page. Some of the content has also been reposted on JBlog Central.
UPDATE: The BBC reports:
Police hunting a gunman suspected of killing seven people in southern France have surrounded a house in Toulouse.
According to the French interior minister:
…the suspect had made several visits to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
“He claims to be a mujahideen and to belong to al-Qaeda,” Mr Gueant said.
“He wanted revenge for the Palestinian children and he also wanted to take revenge on the French army because of its foreign interventions.”
Spencer probably now regrets blinking, although the fact that the gunman also killed two Muslim soldiers might make the obvious polemical line slightly tricky.
UPDATE 2: Spencer now has several new posts on the subject, including one in which he has fun with foreign media for suspecting Neo-Nazis: “I do not blame them for thinking that it could have been Nazis, since they have so much in common with the followers of the Quran”. Of course, Spencer glosses over the fact that reports such as these also gave him a serious case of cold feet – which prompted him to delete rather than to inform.
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To take the details of the story further, it now turns out that the three soldiers who died in previous related attacks (apparently carried out with the same guns as those which were used against the Jewish school) were Muslim:
Sorry – the link for that quote:
http://www.jpost.com/VideoArticles/Video/Article.aspx?id=262515
It looks like Robert Spencer was right and you were wrong AGAIN. Maybe that is why Robert is a respected somebody and you are a nobody, Richard?
Funny how some people can type but are unable to read properly.
Maybe, with enough time, such people could conceivably type out the complete works of Shakespeare, but I doubt it.
What I never understand is why people from the developing countries never recognise mental illness issues. When persons display all the signs of mental instability, they just ignore them for attitude problems and hence send them back home in a program called “re-education”.
This guy showed up at his mothers weilding a swords whilse earing umilitay fatigue. That should have been enaugh to raise the alarms, but as usual it seems he was told to “shake it off”, or a “Waster” as one person was reported by the BBC when asked to describe him.
That is the problems I continously witness in these communties whether they are from Asia or Africa.
Never mind Richard, your double standards and use of guilt-by-association against all critics of militant Islam are completely justified. Because they are well-meant attempts at avoiding stigmatizing all Muslims because of the religiously-motivated actions of a few. /liberal Taquia
You are not alone http://www.ionainstitute.ie/index.php?id=2035
[…] a policy that can lead to double volte faces; in March 2012, Spencer immediately suggested that a gun attack in France had been the work of “Islamic antisemitism”; when reports […]