Students barricading the lycée François-Villon in Beaugency, a sleepy Loire Valley town near Orléans, France, were caught on video belting out a rap track that name-checks Mohammed Merah, the jihadi who gunned down Jewish schoolchildren in 2012.
The track also invokes another terrorist who was part of the Bataclan massacre, the bloodbath that left 90 concertgoers dead in Paris in 2015. Its lyrics brag about shooting victims and dodging cameras like the gunman who killed Jewish children.
The October 1 blockade was part of a nationwide wave of protests that have turned violent. Police counted 169 blockades across France that morning, and many turned violent.
But the Beaugency footage stood out.
Media outlet Frontières posted the clip on October 5, and it exploded online. By October 6, the prosecutor’s office had opened a preliminary investigation, Le Figaro reported.
Now, three minors are being prosecuted for publicly glorifying terrorism, according to regional paper La Nouvelle République. Prosecutors say the song contains language that may meet the legal definition of the crime.
For France’s Jews, the name of the terrorist gunman is not a punchline. It is a gaping wound.
On March 19, 2012, shortly before 8:30 a.m., Merah parked a scooter outside the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school in Toulouse as children arrived for morning prayers.
He opened fire on the crowd at the gate. Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, 30, a teacher, fell first. Next to him lay his son Arieh, 5. The killer’s submachine gun jammed, so he pulled a pistol and kept shooting.
Myriam Monsonégo, the 8-year-old daughter of the school’s director, ran.
She didn’t get far. A school worker assigned to watch Myriam until her bus came later told a Paris courtroom what he saw. As she sprinted toward the courtyard, her schoolbag tumbled to the ground and burst open. Her ballet slippers spilled out. He testified that, he believed, the little girl bent down to pick them up.
France is outraged by the high school protesters using the rap song MRH in their protest.
In the song, they reference the Islamist terrorist Mohammed Merah who murdered 8-year-old Myriam Monsonego back in 2012 for being Jewish.
On March 19th 2012, Mohammed Merah arrived at the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school in Toulouse heavily armed.
He first shot Rabbi Jonathan Sandler and Sandler’s sons, Arieh and Gabriel, who were waiting near the gate.
Myriam, the school director’s daughter, ran into the courtyard.
Witnesses and later trial testimony said she turned back for her pink schoolbag with her favorite ballet slippers.
She stumbled and was caught.
Merah grabbed her by the hair and shot her in the head.
He murdered 7 people in total
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) October 6, 2026
According to an account published by the CRIF, the umbrella group of French Jewish institutions, Merah shot her in the back. He then turned his gun on 3-year-old Gabriel Sandler. Then he came back for Myriam. He grabbed the wounded child by the hair and shot her in the head at point-blank range. Then he rode off on his scooter.
Days earlier, the terrorist had murdered three French soldiers. Police killed him on March 22 after a siege of more than 30 hours at his Toulouse apartment. His brother was later convicted on terror charges and sentenced to 30 years.
The massacre sent shockwaves through French Jewry. Yaacov Monsonégo, Myriam’s father, still runs the school, which has since been renamed. After the attack, so many families left for Israel that enrollment dropped from more than 200 students to about 140.
Fourteen years later, a group of French teenagers turned the man who murdered his daughter into a chorus.
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