Belsatzar
The songs of a nasheed, a poem to the glory of Jihad, are running on a loop in his head. Mehdi Nemmouche also repeats to himself the words of the imam he had met in Aleppo: "This is Jihad, my brother, you must kill the infidel..."
There, Mehdi had become "Abu Omar". He was feared even by the brothers, because he knew how to punish the prisoners he had in his hands. It was Salim, his leader, who had entrusted him with the honor of this great mission: "This is the first attack of the Islamic State in the West, my brother. You have to hit them in the heart of Europe. You choose the target, the Jews if you can..."
So Mehdi had chosen the Jewish Museum of Belgium, rue des Minimes, in Brussels. The Jews, this arrogant people martyred their brothers in Palestine, killing children, humiliating men in Muslim lands. They had to be punished. Mehdi had left corpses in the museum.
He was proud to have become Abu Omar. He was no longer Mehdi, the despised North African, the object of disdain of all those pretentious students who ignored him at law school. Now they all saw that he had become a warlord, a champion of conquering Islam.
Over there in Syria, non-Muslim women were given to him for nothing. They were his slaves, as they would be here soon, Inshallah, if the Jihad was carried out. But all those girls he had owned in Syria were just frightened faces, full of tears. They bored him.
He thought of Emilie, whom he had known in the Bourgogne district, in Tourcoing, when he lived with his grandmother. She was pretty with her light brown hair, she smelled good, she had found him beautiful. He had dated her for a while before he got into trouble and ended up in prison. But he had often thought of her. Emily was the woman he wanted to start a family with, to have children. She was the only one who soothed him when she smiled at him or ran her hand through his hair. But things had gone wrong. There had been the incident with the teacher in Tourcoing, the thefts...
It was in prison that he had learned what Islam really was, the Islam he was made for. Jihad had given him everything a man could want: money, power, the adventure of combat and the pleasure of humiliating his enemies. What he lacked was a woman to admire him.
He had contacted Emilie before he left for Syria. He hoped to take her there. He had called her home. He had come across her mother, sullen: "Who is it from?"
Mehdi...
Leave my daughter alone, you hear me? She is married, she has children. She's out of your hair, you and your friends...
He had hung up. He had the chants of jihad running through his head again. He had only his destiny as a warrior of Islam ahead of him. He was perfectly free, ready for martyrdom. Nothing could hold him back from the West that he hated. Inch'allah, he would kill many more infidels, for the glory of Allah...
Mordechai Ervin Gottlieb was tired. He had come from the embassy. Mordechai was the local correspondent of the office in charge of terrorism affairs in Tel Aviv. He had come to see the layout of the place. He knew the museum, but needed to remember the details.
He had already spoken first thing in the morning with his colleagues at the embassy and had just met with the Belgian police officers in charge of the investigation. They knew nothing, of course.
It was the Mossad, the Israeli secret service, which was usually the best informed. They didn't have much yet, but it would come. It was known that the Islamic State jihadists wanted to strike in Europe and that they had many candidates. Europe was a vast territory to watch.
Surveillance cameras showed a man in a cap and jacket shooting. One could guess a North African, supple and powerful. He was calm, determined, efficient. He was a guy who had been through the fire, who had already killed. They all looked alike.
Mordechai looked around, at the surrounding streets. He tried to retrace the steps of the killer who had struck and then quietly vanished into thin air. Brussels was a cosmopolitan city. The man probably had accomplices who had brought him and then helped him to disappear. It would be necessary to make the rounds of informants to gather clues, but, for Mordechaï, it was signed Islamic State. The sponsor was to be sought among the known leaders on Belgian territory: Abdelhamid Abbaoud, Mohammed Abrihni and others. But it could very well be a newcomer. All these Daech fighters were so young, so thirsty for glory.
Mordechai remembered a time when the youth was in the ranks ofTsahal, in the 1970s, for example, when he decided to move to Israel.
He had left Europe for the dusty, sun-drenched streets of Palestine. Israel was then a young and united world. All were united by the same impulse, the ideal of a young nation. It was an exciting time for them, it was their turn...
Mordechai's father had fled Budapest in 1956, following the uprising. The Magyar Uprising had in fact been a revolt against the communist political police, led by Isidor Bergfeld and the Jews who made up the bulk of the political police.
The anti-communist uprising quickly turned into a pogrom, before the Soviet tanks intervened with 15,000 infantrymen and their tanks. Mordechai's father was an associate of Benjamin Ausspitz, the head of political security in Budapest.
Before he died in Tel Aviv, Mordechai's father had relieved himself by telling his son about the guilty acts that had darkened his soul in the basement of the Batthyani Palace, where torture and executions of opponents of the communist dictatorship were taking place.
Mordechai, in the very impetus of his enthusiastic youth, had thus learned the sad role of his people in the Bolshevik revolution. Many of the political commissars were Jewish and had blood on their hands.
And then, the leaden years of repression in Palestine had further darkened the ideal of his youth.
The war for the glory of his people involved the massacre of children, the bloody missions of the Kidon and the execution of opponents all over the world.
Mordechai had not been directly part of these killer commandos, but as an embassy executive, he had had to work with them. He had seen the dead look in their eyes. He had measured the sacrifice of these souls for their people.
Today, the attacks by young jihadists felt like a response. These men and women were also young. They answered lead with lead.
It would never end, Israel was doomed to swim in a flood of blood. This was the bitter reverse of Mordechai Gottlieb's youthful dreams.
The perpetrators of the attack on the Jewish Museum would be arrested sooner or later, or executed discreetly by an IDF commando. We would discover young men with little religion, recently converted and radicalized; young people who had returned from Syria, ready to spread chaos and death to be recognized by this hated West, to be celebrated by their brothers who had remained in Mosul or elsewhere; to be able to equal the notoriety of a Mohammed Merah or an Amedy Coulibaly. The fire was lit, these young people were so numerous, ready to immolate themselves.
Mordechai was tired of what he knew. He was, by his profession, well aware of the contacts established between Israel and these same jihadists who had just killed at the Jewish museum in Brussels. Israel preferred to create chaos in the Middle East and in the West with these madmen than to keep powerful anti-Zionist neighbors like Iraq, Syria and Iran. Europe and the United States had to support Israel. The best thing was for these countries to suffer from Muslim terrorism on their soil, in their flesh, even if it meant giving an occasional helping hand to these city rebels.
Yes, Mordechai knew a lot about the role of the Israeli services in these operations. He was not proud of it, but he understood. The situation in Jerusalem was so fragile.
"Belsatzar ward in selbiger Nacht /Von seinen Knechten umgebracht". Yes, the Belsatzar had been killed by his slaves that same night... This is what the Jewish executioners of the Romanovs had inscribed in the cellars of the Ipatiev house in Ekaterinburg, paraphrasing the words of Heinrich Heine. It was the eternal revenge of the oppressed against the king.
Now the master was Zion. Mordechai was tired, tired of the fight they were losing.
Comments
Post a Comment