Valls words were uplifting; But it is hard to see how they change the basic reality that the Jews of France face.
Protesters gather at Place de la Republique
January 16 is the nine-year anniversary of the beginning of the Ilan Halimi disaster.
On January 16, 2006, Sorour Arbabzadeh, the seductress from the Muslim anti-Jewish kidnapping gang led by Youssouf Fofana, entered the cellphone store where Halimi worked and set the honey trap.
Four days later, Halimi met Arbabzadeh for a drink at a working class bar and agreed to walk her home. She walked him straight into an ambush. Her comrades beat him, bound him and threw him into the trunk of their car.
They brought Halimi to a slum apartment and tortured him for 24 days and 24 nights before dumping him, handcuffed, naked, stabbed and suffering from third degree burns over two-thirds of his body, at a railway siding in Paris.
He died a few hours later in the hospital.
In an impassioned address to the French parliament on Tuesday, Prime Minister Manuel Valls gave a stirring denunciation of anti-Semitism, and demanded that his people stop treating it as someone else’s problem.
In his words, “Since Ilan Halimi in 2006… anti-Semitic acts in France have grown to an intolerable degree. The words, the insults, the gestures, the shameful attacks… did not produce the national outrage that our Jewish compatriots expected.”
Valls insisted that France needs to protect its Jewish community, lest France itself be destroyed.
“Without its Jews France would not be France, this is the message we have to communicate loud and clear. We haven’t done so. We haven’t shown enough outrage. How can we accept that in certain schools and colleges the Holocaust can’t be taught? How can we accept that when a child is asked, ‘Who is your enemy?’ the response is ‘The Jew?’ When the Jews of France are attacked France is attacked, the conscience of humanity is attacked. Let us never forget it.”
Valls words were uplifting. But it is hard to see how they change the basic reality that the Jews of France face.
When all is said and done, it is their necks on the line while humanity’s conscience is merely troubled.
Ilan Halimi’s case is more or less a textbook case of the impossible reality French Jewry faces. And, as Valls noted, the situation has only gotten worse in the intervening nine years. Much worse.
But back when things were much better, Ilan Halimi was kidnapped, tortured for 24 days and murdered. As Tablet online magazine’s Marc Weitzmann reported last September in an in-depth summary of ordeal, the gang that perpetrated the atrocity had been hunting for Jewish victims for several weeks before Arbabzadeh set her trap for Halimi. All their previous attempts had failed. Their previous marks included Jewish doctors, lawyers, television directors and human rights activists, as well as Jews of no particular distinction aside from the fact that they were Jews.
The anti-Jewish nature of the gang was clear from its chosen victims. The anti-Semitic nature of their atrocious crime against Halimi was obvious from the first time they contacted his mother, Ruth Halimi, demanding ransom for his release. They made anti-Jewish slurs in all their communications with her.
And as she heard her sons tortured cries in the background, Ruth was subjected to his torturers’ recitation of Koranic verses.
And yet, throughout the period of his captivity, French authorities refused to consider the anti-Jewish nature of the crime, and as a result, refused to treat the case as life threatening or urgent.
The same attitude continued well after Halimi was found. As Weitzmann noted, the investigative magistrate insisted “There isn’t a single element to allow one to attach this murder to an anti-Semitic purpose or an anti-Semitic act.”
The denial went on through the 2009 trials of the 29 kidnappers and their accomplices. Anti-Semitism was listed as an aggravating circumstance of the crime – and as such, a cause for harsher sentencing – only for the gang leader Fofana. And in the end, even for him, the judges did not take it into account at sentencing.
As for those 29 kidnappers and accomplices, as Weitzmann notes, each one of them had a circle of friends and family.
As a consequence, by a one reporters’ conservative estimate, at least 50 people were aware of the crime and where Halimi was being held, while he was being held. And not one of them called the police. Not one of them felt moved to make a call that could save the life of a Jew.
After the fact, the media in France were happy to publish articles by the torturers’ defense lawyers insisting, “Only people motivated by ‘political reasons’ would try to sell the opinion that anti-Semitism is eating away at French society.”
When the Halimi family lawyer boasted of close ties to the government and announced he would appeal the sentences of the perpetrators if he didn’t think their punishments were sufficient, the French media eagerly shifted the conversation from the torture and murder of a Parisian who just happened to be a Jew by a band of sadists who just happened to be Muslims, to the more comfortable narrative of the Jewish lobby and Jewish power. So, too, when Halimi, and six years later when the three children and the rabbi massacred at Otzar Hatorah Jewish day school in Toulouse, were brought to Israel for burial, the media reported their decision in a negative way hinting that it was evidence of the basic disloyalty, or otherness of the Jews of France.
In other words, what Halimi’s murder exposed is that anti-Semitism in France is systemic. Muslims are the main perpetrators of violence. And they operate in social environments that are at a minimum indifferent to Jewish suffering and victimization. This violence and indifference is abetted by non-Islamic elites. French authorities minimize the unique threat Jews face. And the media are happy to ignore the issue, or when given the slightest opportunity, to claim that the Jews are responsible for their own victimization.
Indeed, in live reports from the scene of the hostage taking at the kosher supermarket in Paris last week, Weitzmann noted that in the early hours of the attack, French media failed to mention that the hostages were Jews.
Under these circumstances, where the entire French system is stacked against them, what can be done for French Jewry? What can they do for themselves? It is far from clear that France is capable of correcting its downward trajectory.
Demography is moving France in a different direction. According to Israeli political scientist Guy Bechor, Marseilles will be the first Western European city with a Muslim majority. The ruling Socialists owe their victory to the Muslim vote. It is hard to see French President François Hollande and his comrades taking actions that could anger that constituency which votes as a bloc.
Moreover, anti-Semitism in all its forms is manifested throughout French society. For instance, the prosecutor in the Halimi murder trial is the son of a French Nazi collaborator and according to Weitzmann, spent an inordinate amount of the trial trying to understand the perpetrators.
Then there is the Israel issue. Valls has distinguished himself from his colleagues for his willingness to acknowledge that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.
But his is a voice in the wilderness. The overwhelming sentiment of the French elites is hostility toward Israel.
This sentiment was manifested in Hollande’s treatment of Israel, and through it of the French Jewish community, in the aftermath of the supermarket massacre last Friday.
Hollande told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to attend the anti-terror march in Paris on Sunday, claiming that Netanyahu’s presence would detract from the message of unity against terrorism that he hoped the march would communicate.
The underlying assumption of Hollande’s message is deeply disturbing.
That assumption is that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism and is not, as a result, evil. The subtext is that the murder of Jews by Islamic terrorists who seek Israel’s destruction is similarly not a crime deserving of the same condemnation as the jihadist murder of French journalists.
Netanyahu rightly ignored Hollande’s request that he not attend. And for this move he was subjected to harsh criticism by the French media which accused him of crashing the party and pushing himself onto center stage against the wishes of his unwilling hosts.
Their criticism was then parroted by the Israeli media that studiously ignored the endemic anti-Israel hostility of the French media and the anti-Israel policies of the Hollande government. The Hebrew media, together with Hatnua leader Tzipi Livni, also ferociously attacked Netanyahu as well as Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman and Economy Minister Naftali Bennett for upsetting French sensibilities by calling on French Jewry to make aliya.
But aliya is the key for contending with the increasing danger that the Jews of France face from the systemic nature of French anti-Semitism. This is true first of all because as France makes it clear that it is not a warm home for its Jews, Israel is a better option. Israel exists so that Jews always will have a better option than suffering at the hands of hostile non-Jews.
Speaking of aliya is also essential because so far the only thing that has caused French authorities to speak directly against anti-Semitism and take action to defend French Jewry has been the prospect of a mass exodus of their Jews.
The year 2014 saw a 50 percent increase in French aliya. And the Jewish Agency anticipates that that number will double to 15,000 in 2015, with 50,000 more not far behind.
After Ilan Halimi was murdered, out of fear of upsetting the French, no Israeli leader, including then-foreign minister Livni, uttered a word of condemnation against the atrocity. No Israeli representative attended his memorial ceremony.
No one urged French Jews to make aliya.
And the number of anti-Semitic attacks increased massively each year. French governmental hostility toward Israel similarly escalated with each passing year.
There is unfortunately every reason to believe that the massacre at the kosher supermarket in Paris last Friday will not be the last one. But it is also clear that the best way to avert more suffering is to speak often and forcefully about the option of moving to Israel. Israel must also take active steps to prepare the country for the arrival of our French brothers and sisters.
Hollande will certainly express his annoyance as he continues to condemn Israel at every turn for imaginary misdeeds. But the French Jews will be strengthened. While the conscience of humanity may be uselessly miffed by the victimization of Jews, the Jews of France will know that there is one place on earth that exists to prevent that victimization, and that they are welcome here whenever they choose to come.
@ dweller:
dweller Said:
What you gave was opinion, mega speculation, unsupported theory but not history at least history supported by sufficient provable/verifiable facts to be called history. You seem to gravitate to myth, fables, fantasy and a hell of a lot of interpolation of anything you can’t or refuse to explain rationally.
History it ain’t….. About time you learn to call a spade a spade ie., [You are long on personal opinions and very weak re; to verifiable facts and truth.]
@ yamit82:
Since when do I need to be asked, in order to comment on a public blogsite?
dweller Said:
Who asked you?
dweller Said:
Well I do know what they say about your opinions and your faux opinions you tout as facts.
dweller Said:
Link has been botted maybe Ted will post!!!
dweller Said:
Well I do know what they say about your opinions and your faux opinions you tout as facts.
dweller Said:
@ yamit82:
Figured you’d revert to type. And you never do disappoint.
What I gave you was nothing but history; take it or leave it, it’s all the same to me.
He did get lots of ‘help’ from his Mom, but he didn’t ‘invent’ Xty; it was already well on its way to becoming a separate & distinct religion ever since the aftermath of the Bar Kochba Revolt. He got into the act to force the myriad streams & strains of it to come together so he could make it the state religion.
This part of your assessment is likely correct.
Poppycock. Authenticity of the writings of Justin Martyr has never been challenged. (Whether their substance is SOUND is open to question, but whether they are his is not.) And he antedates Constantine by 150 years.
And the writing of NT itself is largely (if not entirely) the work of Jews of the 1st century (before there was a ‘Xty’), so to call it a ‘Christian’ document would be problematic anyway.
No way Constantine was smart enough to ‘invent’ such an individual.
Thanks for your opinion.
You DO know what they SAY about opinions, right?
@ yamit82:
Rope a dope !!!!!!!!!!!!! heh heh heh
@ honeybee:
NE 13 zip heh heh !!!! 🙂 🙂
yamit82 Said:
Who can’t !!!! I am watching the Texas boy outplay Brady.
@ honeybee:
I can do that even sing it better than taylor:-)
Yes youthful 🙂 ha ha my server is down using tablet wifi
@ yamit82:
@ yamit82:
Youthful???????????????
@ bernard ross:
@ yamit82:
All we now is for James Taylor to sing “Bring in the Clowns”
bernard ross Said:
Yeah that must be it! 😉
@ honeybee:
You expected something else?
honeybee Said:
youthful exuberance? 🙂
@ yamit82:
I guess World Peace was to much for which to hope.
yamit82 Said:
this is interesting, but then if so, is it meaningful to talk of left and right on these issues?
yamit82 Said:
you may be right concerning the unreliability of the right wing govs of the past but I dont see where you beleive oppostion to leftist policies will materialize from if the right wing gives away land? Also, you have not debunked efirub argument that a right wing opposition does not emerge to block a left wing gov, the argument wrt Rabin and Oslo appears to still stand in actual history.
yamit82 Said:
you still have not demonstrated this assertion based on history or anything else.
@ bernard ross:
Before during and after Oslo, the Israeli right had the left on the ropes, BB beat Peres over Oslo and before that Rabin was having Buyers Remorse. If not for the Assassination of Rabin by a right winger the election would have been a Land slide for the Likud and the right…. BB double-crossed the right by accepting Oslo and giving up Hebron, arming and training the PLO terrorists and ceding more territory. It wasn’t the Left who gave up territory it was always a government led by the Likud or Sharon’s Kadima.
Without the treason by Begin by giving away the Sinai and setting the precedent and establishing the Land for peace principle that included dismantling permanent and official Jewish settlements and the accompanying ethnic cleansing of Israeli Jews Oslo could never have come into being.
In hindsight the Likud since they agreed to terms at Camp David ceased to be not only an ideologically based political party they eased to be a right wing party as well.
Think about it the left never gave away territory it’s always parties identified as being on the right even as they have shown they are not.
Both you and efirub are mistaken and wrong.
yamit82 Said:
efirub Said:
Sorry Yamit, I have got to agree with efirub. History tells us the opposite. In fact, even when almost in the drivers seat, like now, the right was unable to advance nationalist programs such as settlement, annexation, transfer, lawfare, diplomacy. If the right is unable to exert its influence with such an opportunity it demonstrates that the right that we would like to see on nationalist issues is quite small and relatively ineffectual when compared to a left who was presumably out of power. The left and the right is best defined on this issue as varying shades of giveaways: the left wants to give away as much as possible of YS and Jerusalem, the center right wants to maintain troops in the valley but give away parts of Israel west of the green line, Jerusalem and keep major settlements; the right wants to keep area C and figure out A & B later. There is too little connection of Israelis to the land of Israel in general. The left will not change, they will merely look back, admit they weren’t completely right and move on to their next hopey dreamy folly. The answer is in the middle and with the religious. I have little faith in the religious sector standing up for Israeli control of the land of Israel and in my opinion this is where the crisis resides. Were the religious sector capable of supporting Jewish control of Israel there would be no problem as we have seen that 750k went to a rabbi’s funeral but hardly a one of them stand up for YS. If the religious sector transforms itself into being for israeli control there is hope but I believe they are still busy advising jews to stay and die in europe just like the left.
dweller Said:
Projecting dweller? That what you did to your mommy?
Constantine? Wasn’t he the dude who invented christianity?? With lots a help from his mom……
After bloody civil war he needed something to unite the warring factions and chose new state religion which he invented, one that revered temporal authority and obeyed the law and paid their heavy taxes . No authentic christian document exists before Constantine. Paul was his invention.
Thanks for reminding me.. Btw the torah is not a history book and was never meant to be one.
@ yamit82:
@ dweller:
Yawl agree !!!!!!!!! A miracle for our times!!! There is hope for World Peace !!!!
Comment#15 Absolutely don’t agree with your analyzes.
“With a Labor led coalition the right can unite to block unwanted initiatives and begin to develop leadership”????? I remember it was happened during Oslo.
What are you talking about.
@ yamit82:
Me neither.
The mountain has got to be further east: on the other side of the Gulf of Eilat, in Midyan (NW Arabian peninsula, 40 mi inland) — not on Sinai peninsula.
In fact, it would have be the same mtn where Moses encountered the Burning Bush. Upon being given his commission at that time, he’s told that upon taking Bnai Yisrael out of Egypt, he’s to bring them back to that same mountain. Ex 3:12. So THAT must be Har Sinai.
There IS a mtn fitting the description in Midyan. It’s higher than the others, with sufficient flat plains around its foot to have accommodated an assemblage of 3 million persons. The peak’s top is reputedly severely scorched (soil, boulders, everything), perhaps from multiple & massive lightning strikes. . . . The local Bedu call it Jebel al-Lawz.
The mountain on the Sinai peninsula was the ‘discovery’ of Helena, the Emperor Constantine’s meddling mother. She was constantly underfoot, keeping him from getting any work done, and he apparently decided that the practical thing was to give Mom a ‘project’ that would get her out of his hair. Hence, her travels here, there & everywhere; including “Mt Sinai.”
But when Moses stumbled across the Burning Bush, he’d been herding Yitro’s sheep in Midyan, and would have had to cross the Gulf of Eilat/Aqaba — with the sheep — to find himself to have wandered onto the Sinai peninsula
— a development which would, further, have created ANOTHER problem, as the peninsula was part of the Pharaoh’s territory-jurisdiction, and (so far as Moses knew) there was still a price on his head.
@ mar55:
It’s very rough and rocky terrain. It was a difficult climb because we did it at night in order to reach the peak so we could watch the sunrise. Monastery is quite a construction as well. Since I never believed it was the real Mt Sinai it held no emotional religious attachment but for it’s sheer beauty I did relate. I love the Sinai and want it back. I believe we will get it back sooner or later. It’s ours by right.
@ yamit82:
These are beautiful videos. I wish I had climbed all the rocks to get there. The beauty and solitude. The topography of the area must make you feel as in the middle of heaven. It is conductive to prayer. Could you relate the experience of such a climb? On the practical level. What do they do for water?
Thank you for the videos.
@ yamit82:
@ honeybee:
Here is the web-site for Exodus:
http://www.patternsofevidence.com/en/
@ mar55:
Thank for the information .
@ bernard ross:
Thanks to Barak’s retreat from Lebanon: In next round Hezbollah can fire over thousand rockets a day and grab territory inside Israel
imra@imra.org.il
Jan 17 at 6:46 PM
IDF forecast for 2015: Middle East ‘mess’ will continue
Outgoing head of IDF Military Intelligence research division Brig. Gen. Itai
Brun tells Israel Hayom that the Syrian government is still using chemical
weapons
Brun: In next war in north, Hezbollah will try to grab territory inside
Israel.
Yoav Limor Israel Hayom Thursday January 15, 2015
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=22821
“We are expecting the mess in the Middle East to continue in 2015,” Brig.
Gen. Itai Brun, the outgoing director of the IDF Military Intelligence
research division, told Israel Hayom in an exclusive interview this week.
Let Hollande and the frogs burn in hell(france)
@ yamit82:
@ honeybee:
It will show in the entire country one time only. Monday, January 19th at 7.00PM. Must reserve tickets in advance at $12.00 a ticket. In NYC at the East Village, 42nd. Street, 3rd. Ave. Broadway and Union Square. LI Westbury. Queens, College Point. Additional locations in New Jersey.
@ yamit82:
Of course, what else would you expect from the incisive and keen mind of Deborah????
@ honeybee:
Insightful!!! Very good. 😉
@ yamit82:
@ bernard ross:
Dicha of Deborah: France may not be France without it’s Jews, but Jews can be Jews without France.
@ yamit82:
great videos as usual
woolymammoth Said:
Any coalition led by BB and the Likud will execute rthe same policies as the left led by Labor and Livni. Yes there will be some nuances especially on domestic issues but wrt the Peace process and relations with our enemy neighbors near and far the overall and general policies will be very much the same.
BB has managed to divide and split those on the political and right of center unity and allow minor parties and the left to maintain control of the centers of power and influence in Israel.
With a Labor led coalition the right can unite to block unwanted initiatives and begin to develop leadership that you seem to desire. That will never happen with BB and Likud calling the shots.
Welcome back Mrs. Caroline Glick. You were conspicuous by your absence. You got off to a good start here, pitching strikes in the bullpen. You should be fully warmed up now. Good timing, the nation desperately needs your wise counsel. You have got to help Bennet, the stakes could not be higher.
Question: Could this election result in a dreaded livni coalition? Please say “NO”.
When I was in Sinai there is a christian belief in a place where they claim is the original Mt Sinai called Santa Catarina where thy built a beutiful and interesting monastery. I climbed the mountain once.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zf83FpoPoQ0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1Sokdxhrps
@ yamit82:
All they say is new evidence formed by a new timeline.
@ honeybee:
Is this the theme of the new Documentay or is it something else?
@ yamit82</
Always thought this, studied Ancient History. A student, de claro !!!!!!!!!!
@ honeybee:
Could it be based on this theory???
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBTDCJzKrpg
@ yamit82:
it is an interesting new perspective on the Exodus open I believe next in selected theaters. A documentary firmed in Israel and Egypt. The writer claims the accepted timeline of the Exodus at the time of Ramses is incorrect.
@ honeybee:
Don’t think so tell me about it.
@ yamit82:
Interesting. Have you learned about the new movie on “The Exodus” ?
One of the Most Amazing Stories in Israel’s History!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juwF2Eo_Z-0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydwxy9yqhzM
I find it an historic curiosity that in the last 60-70 years Half of the Jews in the Diaspora have vacated their homes and communities where many have lived for well over a thousand years. 6-7 million Jews who did not vacate their homes were burned in the ovens of Hitler. The Jewish diaspora today consists of mostly north American Jewry with another 3/4 of a million in Europe and half a million in South America still mostly in Argentina.
Reading the tea leaves it seems that He who rules the world through nature and manipulation of history has decided that now is the time to bring em home. Those who refuse will suffer the consequences whatever they may be.
In 1968 less than a year after the six day war the great granddaughter of Dreyfus made aliyah. One historical circle closed. I do not believe there are coincidences or accidents in Jewish history. The G-d of the Jews is the G-d of history.
ordo ab chao
France is doomed.
If French Jews don’t want to read the writing on the wall, they will suffer the same fate as the German Jews did.
And they can’t say they weren’t warned.
The real question is whether the IDF will be sent in (even clandestinely) to protect the Jews of Europe.
Will the IDF be sent in to guard synagogues in France, Holland, Blegium and Sweden? To guard the Antwerp ghetto? What happens when (not if) they are forced to fire on raging Islamists, killing hundreds? Does France decide to give Islamists open season to slaughter Jews by the thousands? If so, does Israel invoke the Samson Option and bring human existence to an end?
This sounds laughable to a leftist media elitist, but could all transpire so fast that they will be vaporized before than can even enter one thing on Twitter.