EU foreign policy chief related shooting of French Jews in Toulouse to "what is happening in Gaza"; Ban condemns attack.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Opposition Leader Tzipi Livni each criticized EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton on Tuesday for relating the murder of French Jews in Toulouse with "what is happening in Gaza."
Speaking during a visit to China, Liberman said that the comparison was inappropriate and that he hopes that she retracts her statement. The children Ashton should be talking about, he continued, "are the ones in southern Israel who live in constant fear of rocket attacks [launched against] them from Gaza."
Ashton told a group of Palestinian youth in Brussels on Monday: "When we think about what happened today in Toulouse, we remember what happened in Norway last year, we know what is happening in Syria, and we see what is happening in Gaza and other places - we remember young people and children who lose their lives," AFP reported.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak harshly condemned the statement, calling it "outrageous and far from reality."
"The IDF operates with maximum caution in Gaza in order to prevent harm to innocents," Barak said. "I hope that the EU's foreign minister will quickly realize the mistake she made and withdraw her comments."
Opposition leader Tzipi Livni also called on Ashton to retract the statement, which she called "unacceptable, outrageous and wrong."
"There is no similarity between an act of hatred or a leader killing members of his nation and a country fighting terror, even if civilians are harmed," Livni added.
Ashton's statement came after a gunman opened fire at a crowd of parents and children outside a Jewish school in Toulouse, France on Monday, killing four people.
Interior Minister Eli Yishai also denounced Ashton's statement Tuesday and called for her resignation.
"The statement by Lady Ashton further harms the ability of the European Union to be an honest broker" between Israel and the Palestinians, Yishai said.
"[Ashton] can no longer serve in her position," the interior minister added.
[An Nahar] Chief Paleostinian negotiator Saeb Erakat on Monday condemned an attack by an unidentified gunman who killed four people at a Jewish school in La Belle France, including an Israeli-French dual citizen.
"We strongly condemn all terrorist operations, and in particular the attack today in Toulouse," he said in an statement.
French authorities said at least four people -- one adult and three children -- were dead in the shooting at the Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse.
An Israeli relative of the dear departed man named him as Jonathan Sandler, originally from Jerusalem, who had moved to La Belle France last year.
Israeli media said that two of the three children killed were Sandler's children, aged three and six.
A French prosecutor said the gunman appeared to have first shot Sandler outside the school before one of his weapons jammed, and had then entered the school grounds where he sprayed the area with bullets.
The incident came just days after two previous shootings in the region by a man on a cycle of violence who killed three French soldiers.
Police in southwestern La Belle France launched a major manhunt last week after the killing of three paratroopers and the wounding of another in two separate, but connected, incidents.
[Pak Daily Times] A German-Afghan man whose information prompted terrorism warnings across Europe in 2010 went on trial in western Germany on Monday; on charges he was a member of al Qaeda and another terrorist group. Ahmad Wali Siddiqui I happen to know from experience that Germans are named Fritz, or Rudi, or Heinrich, or something like that, unless they're Helgas. No self-respecting Schweinehachsenfresser would be named Ahmad.
looked relaxed as his trial opened at a court in the western city of Koblenz. No pleas were entered under the German system and Siddiqui did not immediately address the charges against him, telling the court about his upbringing and how he immigrated to Germany as a teenager.
The 37-year-old was captured by US troops in Afghanistan in July 2010 and, while in jug, provided details on alleged al Qaeda plots supposedly targeting European cities. No attacks materialised. He is accused of membership in al Qaeda and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and faces a possible 10 years in prison. Prosecutors alleged that Siddiqui trained with both terrorist groups in Pakistain and in the border region with Afghanistan in 2009 and 2010, with an aim of taking part in jihad, or holy war. Authorities had said he was one of about a dozen radical Mohammedans who left the northern German port city of Hamburg in 2009 to pursue terrorist training in the border region.
Another member of the group, German-Syrian dual national Rami Makanesi, was convicted last year in a Frankfurt state court of membership in al Qaeda and sentenced to four years and nine months. He was placed in durance vile in Pakistain in June 2010 and then extradited to Germany. Before going to Pakistain, Siddiqui and several other suspects met at Hamburg's al Quds mosque, the prayer house that had served as a gathering point for some of the September 11 attackers before they moved to the US to attend flight schools in 2000, German intelligence officials said.
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The main union representing French domestic intelligence officers, those charged with counter-espionage and anti-terror investigations, called Wednesday on its members to stage a protest.
The head of the SNOP union, which represents senior police officers and is the main labour body for members of the DCRI security agency, said his members planned a "gathering" at their Paris headquarters on Friday.
Union secretary general Jean-Marc Bailleul said his members were protesting "human resources management" at the spy agency, and in particular the recent naming of a senior administrator to a post normally held by a field agent.
A smaller union said it wanted no part in the protest, and it was not clear how many of the agency's 4,000 intelligence officers planned to take part.
The head of the DCRI, Bernard Squarcini, said he had resolved the dispute by closing an administrative post in the anti-terror divisions and giving it to a "field-tested officer" from the ranks represented by SNOP.
Bailleul said his union would reject any attempt by agency outsiders to make political capital out of the internal labour dispute, at a time when France is in the midst of a tense presidential election campaign.
President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is running for re-election, made it a priority to reform the DCRI, which his government set up as a merger of the former DST domestic security service and RG political police. But he has also been criticised for allegedly being too close to Squarcini, who is under judicial investigation over allegations he illegally ordered surveillance on a journalist from Le Monde newspaper.
Continued on Page 47
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
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Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
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Chief Paleostinian negotiator Saeb Erakat on Monday condemned an attack by an unidentified gunman who killed four people at a Jewish school in 
cycle of violence
[Pak Daily Times] A German-Afghan man whose information prompted terrorism warnings across Europe in 2010 went on trial in western Germany on Monday; on charges he was a member of al Qaeda and another terrorist group. 
