The father of Toulouse killer Mohammed Merah reportedly is suing police for allegedly murdering his son.

Mohamed Benalel Merah filed a lawsuit against the RAID elite police who shot his son.

“This is a suit against unnamed persons for murder with aggravating circumstances concerning those who gave the orders at the top of the police,” Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, a member of the legal team representing Mohamed Benalel Merah, told AFP.

Mohammed Merah, who murdered four at a Jewish school in Toulouse, was killed last March by police after a 32-hour siege at his house in the southern France city. Merah was fatally shot while jumping from his window during a daylong siege on his apartment in Toulouse.

“You’ve got 300 to 400 heavily armed people and a guy shut up all alone in his apartment. That alone is enough to raise questions,” Coutant-Peyre said.

Merah had confessed to the school killings, which included a rabbi and two of his young sons, and the daughter of the school’s headmaster. He filmed himself carrying out the attacks.

AFP reported that the head of the legal team, Algerian attorney Zahia Mokhtari, said he has evidence that Merah was “liquidated,” including videos that Merah filmed himself during the siege.

The recent massacre at a Jewish school in Toulouse “triggered an explosion” in anti-Semitic attacks across France, according to the French Jewish community’s protection service.

Last Saturday afternoon, three young Jewish men came under attack on their way to synagogue in the French city of Villeurbanne near Lyon, sustaining injuries inflicted by at least 10 men described as being of North-African origin.

Shmuel Mikias, 18, Levi Azoulay, 19, and Shmuel Bitton, 23, had just left a friend’s house where they had enjoyed a Sabbath lunch and were walking towards the Ecole Beth Menachem – a Chabad-Lubavitch run community school where they attended high school – when they encountered three men.

The non-Jewish men “swore at them, spat on them and beat them,” detailed the father of one of the boys, David Azoulay. The boys “thought that was the end, but after walking just another 500 meters, 10 more people started attacking them with hammers and iron bars.”

Azoulay’s son sustained an open head wound and one of his friends was injured in his neck. Both required hospitalization.

“They struck my son’s head with a hammer,” said Azoulay. “His head was opened. He needed four stitches.”

The perpetrators fled when police arrived.

Israel expressed its “profound concern” on Monday following the Villeurbanne attack in a statement from its ambassador:

“The Israeli ambassador to Paris expresses his profound concern in the face of Saturday’s attack on three Jews in Villeurbanne. These three people wore a kippa (Jewish skullcap) on their heads. It would seem that such violent attacks on French citizens of Jewish origin are brought about solely because of their ethnicity.”

The Service de Protection de la Communauté Juive, or SPCJ, made the observation in a statement about its report released Monday, which documented more than 90 anti-Semitic incidents in the 10 days that followed the March shooting at a Jewish school in Toulouse that left four dead.

The SPCJ report was released two days after the violent anti-Semitic attack on June 2 against three Jews at Villeurbanne near Lyon.

The report relies on data compiled by the French Interior Ministry since the March 19 Toulouse shooting, in which Muslim radical Mohamed Merah killed three children and a rabbi at a Jewish school.

In total, the ministry recorded 148 anti-Semitic incidents in March and April, 43 of which are classified as violent, compared with 17 and 37 respectively in March and April 2011.

The last violent incident recorded in the interim report occurred April 30 in Marseille. A Jewish man and his friend were assaulted by people who self-identified to the victims as Palestinians and promised to “exterminate” the Jews, according to the report. The perpetrators assaulted the man, causing him internal bleeding.

SPCJ called the situation “deeply worrisome” and added that it reflected “empathy” on the part of some attackers toward the actions of Toulouse shooter Merah.

A statement by French Interior Minister Manuel Valls read:

“These extremely serious acts are a deliberate attack against our Republic, which allows everyone, without exception, to live freely and in all safety in their religious affiliation,” read the statement.”

Newly-elected French president Francois Hollande in the past said he was “relentless in the fight against anti-Semitism,” and that “security of Jews in France is not a problem of a particular community, it is that of the national community. It’s not up to French Jews to defend themselves but rather to the Republic to protect them. I will not let anything pass, anti-Semitic acts as well as words and more broadly anything that may contribute to a climate which would isolate Jews within their own country.”

This report includes content from JTA and Chabad.org.

Some 5,000 French Jews participated in an aliyah fair in Paris.

The fair, organized and run by the Jewish Agency, took place Sunday as French voters went to the polls and elected Francois Hollande as their new president, beating incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy, considered the favored choice in the Jewish community.

“I cannot recall having seen such a massive number of people interested in aliyah since the days when lines of people stretched out of the Israeli embassy in Moscow,” said Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky, who attended the fair. The annual fair usually attracts about 2,000 visitors, according to the Jewish Agency.

A new survey conducted in March, of the 500,000-member French Jewish community, the second largest in the Diaspora, found that French Jews have grown so disgusted with anti-Semitism that more than one quarter of them are considering emigrating.

The poll was conducted by The Israel Project, which previously measured American attitudes about Jews and Israel in order to produce pro-Israel ads.

According to the poll, 26 percent of those surveyed said they have considered emigrating due to worsening French anti-Semitism.

Of them, 13 percent are “seriously” considering leaving, according to Washington pollster Stan Greenberg, who led the surveys and focus groups.

The mood among French Jews is like a “severe depression,” said Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, a founder of The Israel Project.

According to Ynet, official results show that 92.8% of French nationals residing in Israel (9,186) voted for Sarkozy.

The fair in Paris came on the heels of an attack on a Jewish school in Toulouse in which a rabbi and his two young sons and the daughter of the head of the school were killed.

On a visit Monday to Toulouse, Sharansky said the Jewish Agency and the Israel Trauma Coalition will send counselors to the Ozar Hatorah school from Israel in the coming days, followed by a delegation of Israeli youth counselors. The professionals are charged with helping the students and their parents, as well as the teaching staff, return to their normal routine following the March attack.

“I came to Toulouse in order to strengthen the children and the community, but also to remind them that the Jewish Agency will strengthen their connection to Israel and assist those who are interested in making aliyah,” said Sharansky, though he added that aliyah should not be based solely on a tragedy like the one in Toulouse.

JTA reports were used in this article.

Ahh, that wonderful time when you return home from the hospital with a brand new bundle of joy nestled in your arms. Without getting into the pros or cons of sending yourself or your other children away, or the benefits and possibilities of family or paid help, eventually everyone will go home and you’ll be all by your lonesome, raising the family. So how to make this momentous occasion truly memorable, instead of weeks of what could be construed by some as torture?

I work in a Williamsburg WIC office where large families with eight to ten children are the norm. While pregnant with my third child, I asked these wise women for some handy tips. Their advice was simple: prepare as much as possible before hand, and then gird yourself for the worst. As one forty-year old woman, who came in with her tenth child, put it succinctly: “I never thought I’d say this ten years ago, but cleanliness is history. Current forecast is hurricanes and volcanoes.” More likely than not, the house will be in an uproar, the laundry will pile up, the kids will eat cereal and milk three times a day, and you will live on less then four hours of sleep at night. But, it’s not all gloom and doom. You have a brand new baby! Mazel Tov!

Here are a few practical tips for a smooth transition with an additional baby:

Prep and freeze as many dinners as possible: soup, breaded cutlets, tuna patties, etc. If you you know the gender of the baby – depending on your family’s minhag – consider buying the paper goods and begin baking and preparing for the shalom zachor, vacht nacht (when kids come to say shema), bris or kiddish.

When the baby first comes home, have her or him “give” the older children presents. A gift from someone brings feelings of joy and gratitude – hopefully.

The first few weeks, keep the newborn in a separate room, away from the other kids. This way, the younger children don’t feel displaced by the newest member of the family, and you don’t have to spend half your day preventing the two year old from playing ball with the baby.

Keep the kids involved with the care of the baby, by either fetching diapers, rocking the baby gently in a bouncer or swing, holding the bottle, or my daughter’s favorite activity: reading the baby a book.

It takes approximately six months for the baby to be fully acclimated to the household. During that time limit any additional responsibilities i.e. hosting guests for Shabbos, volunteering for the PTA, or even hosting play dates. Focus on your family and don’t forget about yourself! Take the extra help you need. If money is tight, then figure out what help would be most appreciated and get that. I personally prefer to do my own cleaning and cooking while a babysitter holds the baby. Other women may opt to buy take-out, which cuts back on shopping, cooking and cleaning time. Remember, a Jewish mother is not a martyr. Hashem will provide the resources that are necessary for you to manage.

Savor the joy and mystery of this brand new human being! This time is so fleeting, and just as quickly forgotten. Capture the moment as much as possible, mentally and on camera. These days, with the cameras on your phones just as good as any digital camera, it’s easy to collect a treasure trove of memories of your precious little one just as he is starting his new life.

Personally, I prefer not to find out the gender of the baby, as it gives me something to focus on instead of the rapidly climbing number on the scale, but as we are already blessed with a daughter and son, I felt we were prepared for either one. I did, however, prepare presents for my children, and arranged meals for following my delivery. My son Noach was born after a particularly traumatic cesarean section, and frankly, I didn’t see how I would ever recover. But now two months later, I find that our household has settled into a comfortable transition from two to three children. To give myself a much needed break from the excitement of having two babies less then two years apart, I send my toddler to the babysitter three hours a day and if necessary, I give my children oatmeal and yogurt for dinner guilt-free.

Although this may be a tad controversial, one of the biggest factors that contributed to my rapid recovery after my delivery is that I have the baby sleeping down the hall from me, in a separate room from the other kids. Like many mothers, I found that I had trouble sleeping with the newborn in my room. His soft sighs and turns would wake me up and leave me staring at the bassinet, wondering if he was going to want to nurse or just go back to sleep. At the tender age of three weeks old, I sent him down the hallway, where he learned to have a night schedule and wakes up me only to eat. Afterwards, I quickly fall back asleep for a reasonable amount of time until the next feeding.

A Jewish man was attacked after he left a seder at a synagogue in Kiev.

The man, 25, was found on Sunday night, nearly a full day after the attack, with serious head injuries believed to have been inflicted by glass bottles. He is in critical condition in a Kiev hospital. He also had bruises on his upper body.

After a day of searching he was found in an area near the synagogue, where attacks by neo-Nazi groups have occurred in the past, Yaakov Zilberman, director of the Jewish community in Kiev, told Ynet. He was identified by a local doctor in an area hospital, Haaretz reported.

The Kiev Jewish community is working to have the injured man, who has undergone head surgery, flown to Israel for treatment.

Local police are reluctant to investigate the attack as an anti-Semitic hate crime. Police reportedly are looking into the possibility that the man tripped in the street, according to Haaretz.

Zilberman says he believes the man was targeted because he was wearing a yarmulke when he left the synagogue.

European Jewish Congress President Moshe Kantor in a statement called on Ukrainian officials to hunt down the attackers. He called them neo-Nazis.

“This attempted murder by neo-Nazis in Kiev, just weeks after the Islamist murders in Toulouse, by groups who have nothing in common except for a visceral hatred of Jews, is a phenomenon that European leaders have to stamp out now,” Kantor said. “We call on European leaders to act swiftly to strengthen legislation, bolster education and increase intelligence sharing to prevent what could become a tsunami of hate and violence against the Jews of Europe.”

French elite police units, including the same RAID unit that took 32 hours to spray Toulouse gunman Merah with bullets, have now taken the initiative, and early Friday morning arrested some 20 Islamist militants, including a few in Toulouse.

RAID carried out the arrests in Toulouse in the southwest, Nantes and Le Mans in western France, as well as in the Paris region.

The obvious question is: seriously? A week later, and only twenty bad guys are under arrest?

Americans, Israelis, let’s face it, Mankind, are happy to make fun of the French when it comes to military and police capability. They make fantastic cheese and wine, goes the generally accepted notion, but when it comes to security we’d all prefer to be watched over by Navy Seals or Israeli Commandos.

That general notion is more than a bit unfair, but all of us are not eager to be confused with the facts when it comes to evaluating the French.

Our prejudices were only reinforced by the performance of the elite RAID unit in Toulouse. Last week, Christian Prouteau, founder of the GIGN, an elite French police unit that was not part of the Toulouse failure, questioned the way the operation had been carried out. He asked why RAID had not utilized tear gas and other measures to disable Merah, and said he was surprised that after so many hours of waiting, Police still failed to capture the gunman alive.

But bungling the job in Toulouse does not necessarily imply that Police have their numbers wrong.

Interior Minister Claude Gueant last week defended the security forces’ efforts to stomp out terrorism in that country, saying 700 people have been detained over the past 10 years, and about 60 “Islamists with terrorist tendencies” are currently in French prisons.

How many active Jihadists are operating in France? And how many are, in effect, engaged in plotting the next wild, murderous attack?

The French news channel France 24 says French authorities believe that only between 20 and 30 French nationals are tied to the radical Jihadist groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

CNN, citing a 2010 French intelligence estimate, says the potential number is more like 200 or 250.

Mathieu Guidère, a professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern studies at the University Toulouse II-Le Mirail, told France 24 that the number of French radical Islamists, both violent and non-violent, may be as high as one thousand, with a nucleus of a few—only 10 to 20—who are engaged in plotting.

How reliable are those figures? This depends on the reliability of the men and women in and out of uniform who gather the data. And in that area, the French have been gutsy leaders rather than cowardly followers.

Marc Perelman, writing for Front Page Magazine in 2006, described a 1988 appearance of Alain Marsaud, then France’s top antiterrorist magistrate, before FBI new recruits at the bureau’s academy in Quantico, Virginia.

Marsaud told the audience of would-be federal agents of the deadly threat posed to Western society by radical Islamist terrorist networks. His presentation was “an unmitigated flop.”

“They thought we were Martians,” said Marsaud, who at the time of the interview chaired the French Parliaments domestic security commission. “They were interested in neo-Nazis and green activists, and that was it.”

Excellent cheese and wine aside, it was France which uncovered and thwarted a plot to crash a jetliner into the Eiffel Tower, which was a chilling preview of the 9/11 attacks on the US. France was the first to deal with the unpleasant fact that its own citizens may become assets of Islamist terrorist groups—years before British Muslims bombed the London Underground.

France learned all about Arab terrorism from the Algerian war in the 1950′s, from Palestinian groups in the 1970s, and from Iranian- and Syrian-inspired terrorism in the 1980s. As a result France developed a system that connects seamlessly the judiciary and security forces.

The 1986 comprehensive antiterrorism law set up a centralized unit of investigating magistrates in Paris, headed initially by Marsaud, with jurisdiction over all terrorism cases. Unlike other French criminal proceedings, “terrorist trials in France are judged only by panels of professional magistrates, without the participation of juries.”

Perelman writes:

In the French system, an investigating judge is the equivalent of an empowered U.S. prosecutor. The judge is in charge of a secret probe, through which he or she can file charges, order wiretaps, and issue warrants and subpoenas. The conclusions of the judge are then transmitted to the prosecutors office, which decides whether to send the case to trial. The antiterrorist magistrates have even broader powers than their peers. For instance, they can request the assistance of the police and intelligence services, order the preventive detention of suspects for six days without charge, and justify keeping someone behind bars for several years pending an investigation. In addition, they have an international mandate when a French national is involved in a terrorist act, be it as a perpetrator or as a victim. As a result, France today has a pool of specialized judges and investigators adept at dismantling and prosecuting terrorist networks.

Olivier Guitta wrote in Front Page Magazine in 2005 that “the French understand how clerics and imams radicalize members of the Arab community and help to enlist them in terrorist causes.”

Fox News reports that Adlene Hicheur, a French nuclear physicist of Algerian descent who once worked at Switzerland’s renowned CERN laboratory, is being tried in Paris on charges of collaborating with Al Qaeda in North Africa. His attorneys claim he only sent angry emails. They are afraid their clients would be unfairly linked with the Toulouse murderer.

Hicheur spent two and a half years in prison, awaiting the trial which has begun Thursday. But now that the trial has started, the timing couldn’t be worse for the scientist:

“I think that there should be no confusion between Mohamed Merah and Adlene Hicheur,” said Hicheur’s attorney Patrick Baudouin. He argued that Adlene Hicheur “has a family, friends, working colleagues, a stable entourage. He has never been in Afghanistan nor in any other such country.”

Hicheur’s brother Halim also complained that after the killings in Toulouse, “Some people wanted to raise the specter of the terrorism threat by the Algerian, Muslim nuclear physicist, etc. All the key words you can name.”

The prosecutors base their case on a period back in 2009, when Hicheur sent out a string of angry e-mails calling for the punishment of the West for its anti-Muslim wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The defense argues that the scientist wasd laid up with a herniated disk at the time, and the emails were merely an expression of his pain and frustration.

Attorney Baudouin told Fox News that Hicheur was arrested in a pre-dawn raid on Oct. 8, 2009, at his parents’ home in southeastern France, hours before he was to take a flight to Algeria to work on a real estate purchase.

French investigators analyzed some 35 emails between Hicheur and a recipient they suggest was his Al-Qaida contact, an Algerian named Mustapha Debchi. Some emails mention possible targets, including a French army barracks in the Alps.

It may seem a bit macabre, but the terrible tale of multiple killings of innocents in Toulouse continues to yield messages of hope, peeking through the scenes of blood and gore. It began with the heartfelt plea for increased light that was issued by widow and grieving mother Chava (Eva) Sandler. Now the pregnant girlfriend of one of the Toulouse gunman’s victims has said she will marry her murdered partner in a posthumous ceremony.

Paratrooper Abel Chennouf was among Islamic fanatic gunman Mohamed Merah’s first victims – he was shot dead a week and a half ago at an ATM in Toulouse.

Speaking through her attorney, Gilbert Collard, Chennouf’s pregnant girlfriend, Caroline Monet, 21, announced she was requesting presidential permission to get married to her late partner at an official ceremony.

According to Collard, posthumous marriages may be sanctioned in France under very special circumstances. The decision is in the hands of the President of the Republic.

Attorney Collard said that President Nicolas Sarkozy has given his approval for the ceremony.

The AFP described Caroline Monet as being so “heavily pregnant” when she was attending a military commemoration ceremony in her late partner’s memory on Thursday, that she was had to sit in a wheelchair.

In the past the girlfriends of two policeman killed while on duty in Marseille and Lyon received presidential authorization to marry their fallen mates.