France also has a very bad track record in the Maghreb and lots of people who lived under French rule or lost people in their parents' generation are still alive. Given that France did not do much to make up for that, it is understandable that there still is a lot of hatred and they thus are an easy target. Concentrating a large, poor and badly educated 1st and 2nd generation of immigrants from those countries in neglected suburbs also did not help....

That's no justification for acts of terrorism. The fault is with the individual terrorists, not the French en masse.

I'm not trying to justify terrorism but highlight motivations for it.