• Report: Anti-Semitic incidents surged in 2012

    Jean-Philippe Arles / Reuters, file

    A man comforts a school child as they leave the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school in Toulouse, southwestern France, March 19, 2012 after a man on a scooter opened fire outside the school killing two children and one adult, a police source said. Five people were injured in the attack, which occurred as students were arriving for morning classes at the Ozar Hatorah school, a city official said.

    By Ariel David, The Associated Press

    TEL AVIV, Israel — Israeli researchers and Jewish leaders on Sunday reported a 30 percent jump in anti-Semitic violence and vandalism last year, topped by a deadly school shooting in France, and expressed alarm about the rise of far-right parties in Hungary, Greece and other countries.

    Following a two-year decline in the figures, the annual report on worldwide anti-Semitic incidents recorded 686 attacks in 34 countries, ranging from physical violence to vandalism of synagogues and cemeteries, compared to 526 in 2011. The report was issued at Tel Aviv University, in cooperation with the European Jewish Congress, an umbrella group representing Jewish communities across Europe.

    The report linked the March 2012 shooting at a Jewish school in Toulouse, where an extremist Muslim gunman killed four, to a series of copycat attacks, particularly in France, where physical assaults on Jews almost doubled.

    Researchers who presented the report at the university on Sunday said they had also found a direct correlation between the strengthening of extreme right-wing parties in some European countries and high levels of anti-Semitic incidents, as well as attacks on other minorities and immigrants.

    They said Europe's economic crisis was fueling the success of parties like Jobbik in Hungary, Golden Dawn in Greece and Svoboda in Ukraine.

    Moshe Kantor, the president of the European Jewish Congress, called for strong action by the European Union, charging that governments — particularly Hungary —were not doing enough to curb these parties' activities and protect minorities.


    "Neo-Nazis have been once again legalized in Europe, they are openly sitting in parliaments," said Moshe Kantor, the president of the European Jewish Congress.

    Golden Dawn swept into Greece's parliament for the first time in June on an anti-immigrant platform. The party rejects the neo-Nazi label but is fond of Nazi literature and references. In Hungary, a Jobbik lawmaker has called for Jews to be screened as potential security risks. The leader of Ukraine's Svoboda denies his party is anti-Semitic but has repeatedly used derogatory terms to refer to Jews.

    The report by the university's Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry found little correlation between the increase of anti-Semitic attacks and Israel's military operation in Gaza in November. While there was a spike in incidents at the time, it was much smaller in number and intensity than the one that followed the Toulouse attack, said Roni Stauber, the chief researcher on the project.

    "This shows that the desire to harm Jews is deeply rooted among extremist Muslims and right-wingers, regardless of events in the Middle East," he said.

    The release of the report was timed to coincide with Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day, which was starting Sunday at sundown.

    © 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

  • Austria's Jews wary of quiet rise in anti-Semitism

    AFP - Getty Images

    German Nazi Chancellor Adolf Hitler sits between his close collaborator Martin Bormann (right) and future Governor of Austria Arthur Seyss Inquart (left) in March 1938 at Vienna's Opera, while officers give the Nazi salute from the next box.

    By Georgina Prodhan, Reuters

    VIENNA — Marina Plistiev, a Kyrgyzstan-born Jew, has lived in Vienna for 34 years but still doesn't like to take public transport.

    She recalls the day in 1986 as a teenager when she and her four-year-old brother, whom she'd collected from school with a fever, were told to get off a tram for having the wrong tickets, and nobody stuck up for them, apparently because they were Jews.

    "With me (now), you don't see I'm Jewish but with my children you see that they're Jews. They get funny looks," she told Reuters at Kosherland, the grocery store that she and her husband started 13 years ago.

    While Austria is one of the world's wealthiest, most law-abiding and stable democracies, the anti-Semitism that Plistiev senses quietly lingers in a nation that was once a enthusiastic executor of Nazi Germany's Holocaust against Jews.

    After decades of airbrushing it out of history, Austria has come a long way in acknowledging its Nazi past, and the 75th anniversary on Tuesday of its annexation by Hitler's Third Reich will be the occasion for various soul-searching ceremonies.

    But Jewish leaders who fought hard to win restitution after World War Two are on guard against a rising trend in anti-Semitic incidents, occasionally condemned by Austrian political leaders but seen more generally as a regrettable fact of life.

    AFP - Getty Images

    Passersby offer flowers to a German soldier in a street of Vienna to welcome the German Nazi troops on March 15, 1938 after the Anschluss, the invasion of Austria by the troops of the German Wehrmacht.

    Austrian Jews have grown more vigilant as hooligans have verbally abused a rabbi, Austria's popular far-right party chief posted a cartoon widely seen as suggestively anti-Semitic, and a debate has opened on the legality of infant male circumcision.

    A new poll timed to coincide with the anniversary found that three of five Austrians want a "strong man" to lead the country and two out of five think things were not all bad under Adolf Hitler. That was more than in previous surveys.

    The history of Vienna — once home to Jewish luminaries of 20th-century culture such as Sigmund Freud, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Arnold Schoenberg, but later Adolf Eichmann's testing ground for what would become the "Final Solution" that led to genocide of 6 million Jews — means its Jews are always on the alert.

    Today Austria's Jewish community of 15,000 is diverse, formed mainly of post-war immigrants from eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

    But before Hitler annexed Austria in 1938, the "Anschluss", Austria's Jewish population was 195,000, the same size as present-day Linz, a provincial capital not far from Hitler's birthplace.

    Two-thirds of them were driven out in the "Aryanisation" program immediately following the Anschluss and all but about 2,000 left behind were killed in concentration camps. Today's Austrian Jewish community is almost entirely in Vienna.

    Austrians, many of whom had wanted a union with Germany, maintained for decades that their country was Hitler's first victim, ignoring the fact that huge, cheering crowds had greeted Hitler in March 1938 with flowers, Nazi flags and salutes.

    Within days of March 12, tens of thousands of Jews and dissenters were under arrest, imprisoned or packed off to concentration camps. Jews were shut out of jobs and schools, forced to wear yellow badges, and had their property confiscated.

    The IKG, Austria's official Jewish organization, says the number of anti-Semitic incidents in Austria of which it knows doubled last year to 135.

    The anti-foreigner Freedom Party of Heinz-Christian Strache, who posted the disputed cartoon, consistently scores above 20 percent in opinion polls and has a chance of joining a coalition government after elections this year.

    Still, many Viennese Jews freely stroll through the streets in Orthodox garb, especially in districts such as Leopoldstadt, the former Jewish ghetto where many Jews live again today.

    Related:

    Seven decades after Holocaust, neo-Nazis use soccer to preach Hitler's hate

    Holocaust archive rescues lost identities, reunites family after decades

    A retired teacher's courageous crusade: Tackling neo-Nazi hate

    Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

  • Four generations of struggle: Family's story illustrates revival of Russia's Jewish culture

    Sergey Ponomarev / AP

    Four generations of the Zimanenko-Rozin family pose in their Moscow apartment on Nov. 11, 2012. From left: Mark Rozin, 47, Daniil Rozin, 11, Lev Rozin, 24, Anatoly Rozin, 78, Geda Zimanenko, 100, Luiza Rozina, 78, Maya Rozina, 8.

    Sergey Ponomarev / AP

    An old photograph of Geda Rozina, who is now aged 100, in a family photo album.

    The Associated Press reports from Moscow — In czarist times, Geda Zimanenko watched her mother offer the local police officer a shot of vodka on a plate and five rubles every Sunday to overlook the fact that their family lived outside the area where Jews were allowed to live.

    Then came the Bolshevik Revolution and Zimanenko became a good Communist, raising her own son to believe in ideals that strove to stamp out distinctions of race and religion. Her grandson, born after the death of dictator Josef Stalin, was more cynical of Communism and felt the heat of growing Soviet anti-Semitism.

    Russia warns US of retaliation over 'unfriendly' human rights bill

    Now the 100-year-old matriarch's great-grandson, brought up after the fall of the Soviet Union and in a spirit of freedom of conscience, is fully embracing his Jewish roots: 24-year-old Lev Rozin works at Moscow's new Jewish museum, Europe's largest and Russia's first major attempt to tell the story of its Jewish community. The four generations of Zimanenko's family are a microcosm of the history of Jews in Russia over the past century, from the restrictions of imperial times through Soviet hardship to today's revival of Jewish culture in Russia, a trajectory that is put on vivid display at the Jewish Museum and Center of Tolerance. Read the full story.

    Sergey Ponomarev / AP

    Maya Rozina, 8, and Anatoly Rozin, 78. Anatoly says he remembers being exposed to "everyday" anti-Semitism since childhood when neighborhood children called him and his brother names.

    Sergey Ponomarev / AP

    The family drink tea at their apartment in Moscow.

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  • Jewish settlers voluntarily evacuate West Bank enclave

    Oded Balilty / AP

    Two Jewish settlers watch as movers, not seen, employed by the Israeli Defense Ministry carry out furniture from an apartment in the Ulpana neighborhood in the West Bank Jewish settlement of Beit El, near Ramallah, on June 26.

    Oded Balilty / AP

    Jewish settlers and movers carry out belongings from a settler's apartment in the Ulpana neighborhood in the West Bank Jewish settlement of Beit El, near Ramallah.

    Jim Hollander / EPA

    A mover employed by the Israeli Defense Ministry moves belongings out from an apartment as two neighbors emotionally talk after they embraced on the staircase of their nearly empty apartments in the Ulpana neighborhood.

    Menahem Kahana / AFP - Getty Images

    Israeli settlers wrapped in a tallit, or prayer shawl, is hugged by a child as he prays in front of houses in the Ulpana neighborhood of Beit El settlement.

    Jewish settlers on Tuesday began moving out of apartment blocs that Israel's Supreme Court ruled had been built illegally on Palestinian-owned land, after reaching an agreement with the government to go quietly.

    Sixteen of the 30 families in the contested Ulpana neighborhood of the Beit El settlement were due to leave their homes on Tuesday, and the rest by the end of the week.

    The court had ruled that five Ulpana apartment blocs must be torn down by July 1, landing Netanyahu, whose core constituency is pro-settlement, in a political and legal minefield.

    --Reuters

    Jim Hollander / EPA

    A Palestinian worker emerges from a sewer pipe near two Jewish settler homes in a new neighborhood being established on the outskirts of the Beit El settlement.

    Ilia Yefimovich / Getty Images

    Families evicted from the Ulpana neighborhood move into temporarily housing in the nearby settlement of Beit El on June 26. This is the first day of the evacuation, during which 33 families will be moved several hundred yards to a temporary settlement located inside a military zone.

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  • Ultra-Orthodox Jews protest Israel military draft

    Abir Sultan / EPA

    Thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews participate in a prayer rally and protest against the Israeli government's intention to recruit Yeshiva students to the army and civil service, in the neighborhood of Mea Shearim in Jerusalem on June 25, 2012.

    Thousands of Ultra-Orthodox Jews joined an early-morning prayer rally in Jerusalem on Monday to protest against government moves which could bring to an end the exemption of yeshiva students from mandatory military service.  

    The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that Pini Rosenberg, one of the speakers at the rally, said: "Instead of preparing the prisons for immigrants from Sudan, we suggest to those haters of religion to prepare 50 thousand places of detention for yeshiva students who will refuse to be drafted."


    Menahem Kahana / AFP - Getty Images

    Ultra-Orthodox Jews pray early on Monday morning in the Sabbath Square at the heart of the Jewish neighbourhood in Jerusalem during a protest against the replacement to the Tal Law, that exempts ultra-Orthodox Yeshiva students from mandatory military service.

    Abir Sultan / EPA

    An Ultra-Orthodox man wearing burlap as a sign of mourning takes part in a prayer rally in Mea Shearim.

    Abir Sultan / EPA

    Boys watch from the sidelines of the rally.

     

  • Immigration decision could make it easier for foreign 'fusion' bands to play in US

    Skirball Cultural Center

    Orchesta Kef, a band from Argentina, was denied a visa in November 2009 to perform in Los Angeles.

    The next time Orquesta Kef gets invited to play in the United States, it may actually be able to get into the country.


    The band of young musicians from Buenos Aires, who blend Klezmer music – traditional instrumental music of Eastern European Jews – with Argentine tango and folk, were denied entry in November 2009 by U.S. immigration officials. A U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services director recommended against issuing the group a so-called P-3 a visa to perform at a “Fiesta Hanukkah” concert in Los Angeles, saying there was no proof the group’s act was “culturally unique.”

    After public blowback, an appeals board re-examined the case and reversed the decision – but by then Hanukkah had passed and Orquesta Kef never got to play in L.A.

    This week, Citizenship and Immigration Services announced it was officially clarifying its definition of “culturally unique” to specify that it “is not limited to traditional art forms, but may include artistic expression that is deemed to be a hybrid or fusion of more than one culture or region.”

    The new definition will apply to reviews of future applications for P-3 visas from foreign performing artists and entertainers.

    “It was something that needed to have a more fine-tuned definition,” said immigration services spokeswoman Sharon Rummery. “It’s going to make it easier for us to adjudicate cases like these in the future."

    People who want to perform in the U.S. typically need one of the following: a P-1 visa, issued to internationally recognized athletes, artists and entertainers; a P-2, for artists or entertainers in a reciprocal exchange program; a P-3 visa, issued to entertainers participating in a culturally unique program; or an O-1, known as the “genius” visa, for individuals with extraordinary ability in the arts, athletics, education or sciences (NBA star Dirk Nowitski of Germany, for example, has an O-1).

    In its original P-3 denial, an immigration official concluded of Orquesta Kef:

    “The evidence repeatedly suggests that the group performs a hybrid or fusion style of music, incorporating musical styles from other cultures and regions. A hybrid or fusion style of music cannot be considered culturally unique to one particular country, nation, society, class, ethnicity, religion, tribe, or other group of persons.”

    The band had been booked by the Skirball Cultural Center, a Jewish cultural institution in Los Angeles, to perform at its annual Hanukkah holiday concert. In the visa application, Skirball included a short biography of the band, describing the ensemble’s  “unique musical style” as “based on the millenary force of tradition and the powerful emotion of the Jewish culture, mixed in with Latin American sounds.”

    Skirball also provided letters from music experts who testified to the group’s unique sound.

     “How more culturally specific can you get than Jewish music of Latin America?" Jordan Peimer, Skirball’s vice president and director of programs, thought at the time.

    The visa denial was the topic of several scathing columns, including a blog post on Foreign Policy magazine’s website sarcastically titled “Keeping America safe from Latin Klezmer bands.”

    Watch the most-viewed videos on msnbc.com

    Peimer, who said the initial denial was “a huge missed opportunity,” called the latest decision “a vindication for the band … and also a vindication for the American people.” 

    “It says our government works,” he told msnbc.com on Wednesday.

    Alejandro Filippa, a New York immigration attorney who specializes in artist visa applications, said the immigration agency’s clarification of the definition of “culturally unique” was a positive step in a world of increasingly diverse and interdependent cultures.

    “The door is now more open for an entire new wave of artists to perform in the United States,” Filippa said in an email to msnbc.com. “Unfortunately, the fact this application was initially denied is indicative of the cultural ignorance of some USCIS officers in adjudicating cases that are more reflective of the modern, diverse international community we now live in.”

    As for when Orquesta Kef might finally play in the U.S., Peimer says he hopes to book the band for a future Hanukkah concert.

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  • Sarkozy: Toulouse shootings caused 9/11-like trauma; 19 Islamist suspects arrested

    By NBC News, msnbc.com staff and news services

    French police commandos arrested 19 people and seized weapons in Friday morning swoops on people suspected of radical Islamist activity, in several cities including Toulouse, scene of the killings of four Jews and three soldiers this month.

    President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is waging an uphill battle for re-election in an April-May vote, said more such raids would follow.

    Sarkozy said in an interview with journalists that the trauma of the Toulouse shooting was "very deep in our country," NBC News reported.

    He said it was "a bit -- I don't want to compare the horrors -- a bit like the trauma that followed in the U.S. and New York after 9⁄11."

    "We cannot leave it without making any conclusions. The Minister of the Interior and the Minister of Foreign Affairs have taken the decision to forbid a certain number of predators on French soil .... We don't want people who have values contrary to those of the Republic being invited on French territory," Sarkozy added.

    BBC News, citing a source, reported that the arrests were not connected with the killings of seven people by Mohamed Merah, a 23-year-old Frenchman, who was buried Thursday after he was cornered and shot dead by police.

    French gunman buried in Toulouse

    Merah killed three Jewish schoolchildren, a rabbi and three French paratroopers in three separate attacks that revived worries about Islamist extremism and shook up the French presidential campaign.   

    Jewish school gunman linked to French spies?

    The BBC noted that after Merah was killed, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins had said that accomplices were still being sought.

    Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

  • Was Islamist gunman Mohamed Merah an informant for French spies?

    France 2 via AP

    Mohamed Merah shown in this image from French TV station France 2

    By Alastair Jamieson, msnbc.com

    Mohamed Merah, the gunman who killed seven people including three Jewish children, may have been an informant for France's intelligence services, according to reports that raise further questions about whether authorities missed chances to prevent the attacks.

    The 23-year-old, who is a French citizen of Algerian origin, shot dead three Muslim soldiers as well as three children and a rabbi at a Jewish school before being slain by police commandos at the end of a 32-hour standoff in an apartment in Toulouse.

    It later emerged Merah had traveled to Afghanistan and Israel in 2010 and had been interviewed in November 2011 by the domestic intelligence agency Direction Centrale du Renseignement Intérieur (DCRI).

    Bernard Squarcini, head of the agency, was quoted by French newspaper Le Monde as saying Merah asked for a local DCRI agent by name while he was holed-up in the apartment surrounded by police.

    Father of Toulouse gunman wants to sue France for killing son

    Squarcini told Le Monde that Merah shocked the female agent by saying: "Anyway, I was going to call you to say I had some tip-offs for you, but actually I was going to [kill] you.”

    Merah, who told police he had been inspired to commit his attacks by al-Qaida, used the French word "fumer", which means "to smoke," which is a slang term that also means to "murder" or "waste."

    Squarcini’s remarks to Le Monde were reported in other French media, including Liberation and Le Figaro.

     

    'Not trivial'
    Yves Bonnet, former head of an intelligence agency that was merged with DCRI in 2008, told Toulouse newspaper La Dépêche du Midi that it was significant that Merah appeared to have a regular contact at the DCRI. “Having a contact is not totally innocent,” he told the newspaper. “This is not trivial.”

    Italian newspaper Il Foglio said Merah’s trip to Israel and Afghanistan in September 2010 was made with the knowledge of the French foreign secret service, the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure. However, London's Independent newspaper quoted a spokesman for the agency as dismissing that report as "grotesque".

    Squarcini has since insisted Merah was not helping authorities, telling Liberation the gunman was not "an informer for the DCRI or any other French or foreign services."

    Meanwhile, Merah’s body will be flown to Algeria on Thursday if the country agrees to receive it, an official at one of the biggest mosques in Paris told Reuters.

    Abdallah Zekri said Merah's body was being kept at a hospital in Toulouse while Algerian authorities decided whether they were willing to receive it. French media had reported that Merah's father had requested burial in Algeria.

    On Tuesday, Merah's father, Mohamed Benalen Merah, lashed out at French authorities for killing his son. The elder Merah, who lives in Algeria, had earlier said he wanted to sue France.

    "France is a powerful country with huge resources," Merah told France 24 television. "They could have taken him while he slept. They could have used a sleep-inducing gas and taken him like a baby. Why were they so hasty? Why did they kill him?"

    "They could have arrested him and had him face justice," he added.

    However, the BBC said French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe responded: "If I were the father of such a monster, I would shut my mouth in shame.”

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  • Jews protest Hitler shampoo ad in Turkey

    By The Associated Press

    ANKARA, Turkey -- Turkey's Jewish community was on Monday protesting a Turkish commercial that uses an old film footage of Adolf Hitler to sell shampoo.

    The Chief Rabbi's office called Hitler "the most striking example of cruelty and savagery" and said using his image in a commercial was unacceptable in a statement.

    The statement also demanded a public apology from the advertising company "to repair the damage this commercial has caused to society's conscience."

    The commercial for a men's brand of shampoo has Hitler appear to be shouting in a dubbed-over Turkish voice: "If you are not wearing women's dress, you shouldn't be using women's shampoo either!"

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    © 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

  • French spymaster: Gunman didn't plan school attack

    France 2 via Reuters

    France's prime minister has rejected accusations that intelligence lapses allowed Mohamed Merah, a man with a violent criminal record who had been spotted twice in Afghanistan, to become the first al-Qaida-inspired killer to strike on its soil.

    By msnbc.com news services

    PARIS -- French President Nicolas Sarkozy's spy chief says a gunman who killed three young children and a rabbi at a Jewish school only attacked the school after missing his original target -- a French soldier.

    Ange Mancini, Sarkozy's intelligence adviser, said on French TV that Mohamed Merah had wanted to kill a soldier he had targeted Monday in Toulouse, but arrived too late and instead besieged a nearby Jewish school.

    Mancini told France-24 TV on Friday that "it wasn't the school that he wanted to attack," calling the school shooting "opportunistic."

    Police: Suspect in French spree hit by 20 bullets

    Merah, a 23-year-old Frenchman of Algerian descent, was killed Thursday in a shootout after police raided the Toulouse apartment
    where he had been holed up for 32 hours in a standoff with authorities.

    Also on Friday, the country's s prime minister rejected accusations that intelligence lapses allowed Merah, a man with a violent criminal record who had been spotted twice in Afghanistan, to become the first al-Qaida-inspired killer to strike on its soil.

    Graphic video may help answer whether gunman worked alone

    Merah shot dead three Jewish children and four adults in three separate attacks despite having been under surveillance by the DCRI domestic intelligence agency, which questioned him as recently as November.

    Hardened by battling Islamic militants from its former North African colony of Algeria, the French security services have long been regarded as among the most effective in Europe, having prevented militant attacks on French soil for the last 15 years.

    Negligence?
    Opposition politicians, including far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, suggested that negligence or errors had permitted Merah to carry out three deadly shootings within 10 days before he was identified, located and killed.

    But Prime Minister Francois Fillon said the police and intelligence agencies had done an exemplary job.

    "Resolving a criminal case of this importance in 10 days, I believe that's practically unprecedented in the history of our country," Fillon told RTL radio.

    French presidential race irrevocably altered by Toulouse killings

    Merah amassed a cache of at least eight guns under the noses of French intelligence, including several Colt .45 pistols of the kind he used in the shootings, but also at least one Uzi submachine gun, a Sten gun and a pump action shotgun.

    Foreign Minister Alain Juppe had appeared to acknowledge on Thursday that there were grounds to question possible security flaws, saying: "We need to bring some clarity to this."

    "Since the DCRI was following Mohamed Merah for a year, how come they took so long to locate him?" Socialist party security spokesman Francois Rebsamen asked on the JDD.fr website.

    Merah's elder brother Abdelkader, 29, who is now under police questioning, was also on a security watch list after being linked with the smuggling of Jihadist militants into Iraq in 2007, government officials said.

    The left-leaning daily Liberation asked in an editorial whether the intelligence services had not "failed miserably."

    Email trail led cops to suspect in Jewish school slayings

    "How could they have so underestimated the potential danger of an individual they already knew?"

    In Washington, two U.S. officials said Merah was on a U.S. government "no fly" list, barring him from boarding any U.S.-bound aircraft. The officials said that his name had been on the list for some time.

    Silence across France honors victims of attack on Jewish school

    The officials said the entry included sufficient biometric detail to make clear the man on the blacklist was the same person involved in the Toulouse shootings. He was put on the list because U.S. officials deemed him a potential threat to aviation, one of the officials said.

    Rebsamen said that after the shooting of two paratroopers in Montauban, near Toulouse, on March 15, Merah's name was on top of a DCRI list of 20 people to be particularly closely watched in the southwestern Mid-Pyrenees region. Yet the agency appeared to have lost his trace.

    Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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    Email trail led cops to suspect in Jewish school slayings

  • Jerusalem funeral for victims of French school shooting

    Baz Ratner / Reuters

    A relative of seven-year-old Miriam Monsonego (bottom center) mourns during the joint funeral service in Jerusalem on March 21, 2012 for her daughter and the other three victims of Monday's shooting in Toulouse, France.

     

    A joint funeral service is being held in Israel for the victims of Monday's shooting at a Jewish school in the French city of Toulouse.

    The bodies of 30-year-old Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, his sons Arieh, 5, and Gabriel, 4, and seven-year-old Myriam Monsonego arrived at Ben Gurion international airport ahead of a burial service in Jerusalem. 

    The four were gunned down on Monday in the deadliest school shooting France has ever known and the bloodiest attack on Jewish targets in decades.

    A suspect wanted in connection with the attack wounded three police officers in a shootout at a house in Toulouse early Wednesday. Click here for further updates and get the very latest at BreakingNews.com.

    -- The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report

    Ahmad Gharabli / AFP - Getty Images

    An Israeli Zaka volunteer stands next to the bodies of victims of the shooting in a morgue before their funeral in Jerusalem on March 21, 2012.

    Oded Balilty / AP

    Members of ZAKA open the coffins of the Toulouse shooting victims as they prepare the bodies for burial at a morgue in Jerusalem on March. 21, 2012.

     Previously on PhotoBlog:

     

  • All French shooting victims shot in the head at close range, prosecutor says

    Schools throughout France held a moment of silence in memory of the four killed in the Toulouse school shooting. Meanwhile, French police have launched a massive manhunt for the killer. ITN's Martin Geissler reports.

    By NBC News, msnbc.com staff and news services

    TOULOUSE, France -- A prosecutor said that all seven victims of a recent spate of shootings in southwest France -- three soldiers and four at a Jewish school -- were killed with bullets to the head, shot at such close range that the gunfire burned the skin.


    All three attacks were carried out by a man on a powerful motorcycle who was wearing a helmet and carrying a Colt 45, Prosecutor Francois Molins told reporters in Paris. But he said other clues to the killer's identify were scarce.

    "We are confronted with an individual extremely determined in his actions, an armed individual who acts always with the same modus operandi," Molins said, "in cold blood ... with premeditated actions."

    Molins also noted that the attacks had occurred every four days, but said he could not address security arrangements that might be inplace Friday -- the fourth day after the attack on the Jewish school.

    The prosecutor also downplayed an earlier report by Interior Minister Claude Gueant that the shooter had a camera around his neck and could have been filming the attack, saying it was still only a hypothesis.

    Earlier, Gueant had said the attacker was "wearing around his neck an apparatus" that could be used to film and post video online. He said that gave investigators new clues to the killer's "profile," though he admitted that they don't appear to close to an arrest.

    Philippe Desmazes/AFP/Getty Images

    People cry and react before the funeral convoy carrying the coffins leaves the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school after a funeral ceremony, Tuesday.

    'Very cold'
    Gueant described the suspect as "someone very cold, very determined, very much a master of his movements, and by consequence, very cruel."

    Asked whether the gunman recorded the scene Monday morning, Gueant responded, "We can imagine that." But he added that authorities have not yet found any images of the killings online.

    Meanwhile, hundreds of police combed southern France for the killer -- also suspected of shooting dead three French soldiers -- and NBC News reported that local police were to be issued with guns temporarily. Normally only national police carry weapons.

    French schools held a minute's silence at 11 a.m. local time (6 a.m. ET) to remember the victims. Every school in the Toulouse region was also under guard Tuesday.

    BBC News also reported that France had declared its top "scarlet" terror alert level for the first time.

    Miriam, 8, chased down, killed
    The victims at the Ozar Hatorah school were 30-year old Hebrew teacher Jonathan Sandler, his two children, Arye, 6, and Gabriel, 3; and Miriam Monsonego, 8, the daughter of the school principal,  Toulouse prosecutor Michel Valet said.

    The gunman chased Miriam into the concrete courtyard, stopping her by her hair, The New York Times reported. His gun jammed, but still holding her, he switched weapons and shot her in the head.

    President Nicolas Sarkozy said the killings at the school and those of the soldiers, one of Caribbean and two of Muslim origin, appeared to be motivated by racism.

    "In attacking Jewish teachers and children, there seems to be an obvious anti-Semitic motivation," he said late on Monday. "With the soldiers ... one can imagine that the bloodthirsty madness was linked to racism."

    Manhunt for 'most wanted man in France'

    Sarkozy was to meet with members of France's Jewish and Muslim community. France has the largest population of Jews and Muslims in western Europe.

    Police had not named a suspect but said they were searching the city of around one million for a man they believed could be a trained marksman.

    Neo-Nazi ex-soldier
    Police were looking into the possibility that the gunman could be one of three soldiers dismissed from the army in 2008 for neo-Nazi activities, French magazine Le Point reported.

    NBC News reported that the black scooter used by the gunman at the school had been traced to a theft on March 6 and that video surveillance cameras at the school had picked up the license plate number.

    Hadrei Haredim via Getty Images

    Jonathan Sandler, (second from left) his two children, Arye, 6, (left) and Gabriel, 3, (second from right) are pictured in this undated handout image. All three were killed in Monday's shooting at a Jewish school in Toulouse, France.

    It was the most deadly anti-Semitic attack on French soil in nearly 30 years. In August, 1982, six people were killed in a combined grenade and gun attack at the Goldenberg restaurant in Paris' Marais Jewish district.

    As night fell Monday, students of the Ozar Hatorah Hebrew school gathered with the bodies of the victims for an all-night vigil.

    Windows were shuttered at the school, a five-floor brick building in a leafy residential neighborhood. The wall near the front gate bore bullet marks, and one window was shattered.

    The Associated Press, NBC News and Reuters contributed to this report.

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