French Jewish leader: ‘Islamist barbarians are waging war on us’

France’s Jewish community shows solidarity with Catholics after three worshipers murdered at church in Nice.

By Paul Shindman, World Israel News

A top leader of France’s Jewish community condemned the attack in Nice Thursday in which an Islamic terrorist slaughtered three people at a Catholic church, cutting off the head of a female victim and shouting “Allahu akbar” (God is great).

“Islamist barbarians are waging war on us,” tweeted Gil Taieb, vice president of the CRIF, the Council of Jewish Institutions of France. “All united against Islamism. We are all France.”

Police shot and wounded the attacker in the Mediterranean city of Nice on Thursday morning. He was identified as a Tunisian man, carrying a knife and a copy of the Koran, who had entered the country recently as a refugee.

The terror attack was the third in the country in the past two months attributed to Radical Islam, including the brutal beheading of a teacher two weeks ago by an Islamist extremist after the teacher had shown drawings of the Prophet Mohammed in class. Islam bars images of the prophet, and terrorists have used the excuse to stage numerous fatal attacks alleging non-Muslims had caused offense.

In 2015, Islamist terrorists slaughtered 12 people at the Charlie Hebdo magazine that had published cartoons of Mohammed. Islamist terrorists also claimed responsibility for a 2016 terror attack in Nice by another Tunisian that killed 84 people.

CRIF President Francis Kalifat said his organization gave”its solidarity to the Catholics of France. We send our most sincere condolences to the relatives of the three victims.”

“My first thoughts are with their families and loved ones. I want to tell them that their pain and their mourning are ours, as they are for the whole of France,” Kalifat said, assuring “the Catholic authorities and all the people of Nice of our support and our full solidarity.”

“Beyond the terrorist who committed this despicable act targeting people at prayer in a church, it is all those who stir up hatred in our country, inside and outside, who bear the responsibility,” Kalifat said. “I expect the authorities of our country to respond to this ignominy.”

In Washington, Anti-Defamation League director Jonathan Greenblatt called it “another horrifying Islamist terrorist attack in France.”

“Even more devastating this happened in a house of worship. Radical extremism is a global threat,” Greenblatt tweeted.