Posted on 02/25/2006 4:18:49 PM PST by freespirited
One day last month, a young woman entered the Paris mobile phone shop where Ilan Halimi worked. She had no interest in a phone, according to police. She wanted to flirt with the 23-year-old salesman. She left with Halimi's phone number, and soon after, the two arranged a date.
Last week, French police found Halimi -- the son of Jewish Moroccan immigrants -- near a railroad track in a southern Parisian suburb. His naked body was covered with cigarette burns and he was handcuffed. He died in an ambulance on the way to the hospital.
French police initially described the brutal kidnapping and killing as a crime-for-cash perpetrated by a gang calling itself "The Barbarians." It routinely used young women to lure unsuspecting victims.
But in ensuing days, family members, Jewish organizations and a French magistrate labeled the killing a hate crime, directed against Halimi because of his religion. Many have cited the torture and reports that the gang's suspected leader was later arrested in a Muslim neighborhood in Ivory Coast, West Africa.
In a country that experienced a surge in anti-Semitic attacks, most blamed on Muslims, in the first years of the current Palestinian uprising against Israel, top politicians have rallied to condemn the crime. ...
"Ilan's death may be an isolated action, but it is also a wake-up call," said Sarah Aizenman, a representative of the French Union of Jewish Students.
"The engine wasn't anti-Semitism, but the fuel certainly was," said Michel Wieviorka, author of "The Anti-Semitic Temptation: The Hatred of Jews in Today's France."
"It was based on the idea that the Jews are wealthy, and that if the boy doesn't pay, the community will," Wieviorka said.
Ruth Halimi, the victim's mother, told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, "If Ilan hadn't been Jewish he wouldn't have been murdered."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Mon Dieu! What *kind* of anti-Semitism?? Apparently the kind felt so intensely that its adherents murder people.
I am surprised this is at the top of the blog links at the WaPo.
http://www.moonbattery.com
. . .a 'life-threatening' anti-semitism, sir. . .
Somethings off.
For some odd reason, they omit Halimi was also emasculated and had both eyes gouged out as well. These are hardly inconsequential or benign injuries, are they?
The Washington Post probably don't want to offend the, er, "youths" by inflaming infidel passions. We might make un-PC judgments of just what beasts we are dealing with.
He also had third degree burns over most of his body and his eyes were gouged out of his head among other acts of torture done to him, his injuries were listed in earlier articles. They set him on fire and totured him over a period of three weeks, setting him on fire at the end of that time.
Youth is wasted on the "youths."
The cigarette burns were just a piece of the story. He was found naked, tied to a tree after three weeks of all sorts of torture. He had a variety of wounds. They had sprinkled him with lighter fluid and set it on fire.
Somethings off.
Not sure what you are saying. If you don't believe he was murdered, I can't help you.
Oh my God. How horrible. This is the first I'd heard that. The only articles I'd read on this were the first few which only mentioned that he had been stabbed and set on fire, and succumbed to the burns over 80% of his body. That's bad enough, but eyes gouged out too? And when they found him he was still alive? This poor guy was mercilessly tortured over several weeks in ways I can't even imagine. Those who did this should die horrible deaths.
Sorry! I hadn't heard all the other stuff... I can't live on this site.
I can't think of any group that fits that profile. After all, the only beheading he suffered was of his little head...
OMG. . .horrendous. .
.American Justice is not punitive enough. . .for these crimes that harken back to the stone age.
What kind of anti-Semitism as in the difference between that virulent strain practised by the non-Muslim French and the other kind practised by the pieds-noirs which is virulent and violent.
As to waking up, as if the French (or, in a larger sense, European) were capable of waking up.
Are you being slightly sardonic...
If the rabid antisemitism of Mohammedans mystifies you, don't be.
The 200 year hiatus of Mohammedan expansion began with Napoleon's capture of Egypt. Before long Europeans found it necessary to defend Turkey from the Russians. The same Turks who had been trying to batter their way into Europe as recently as ca.1700.
It's that itty bitty weirdness where the Mohammedan World squeezes down to a string called Israel.
Israel cuts the Mohammedan World in two - it is impossible to drive from Cairo to Damascus without riding a ferry or passing under Israeli control. Israelis control access between two continents.
The importance of that is demonstrated by the effect it had on the Turks. It so weakened them that the Crimean War was fought to keep the Czar from gobbling up a third of the Mohammedan world.
The wild hatred of Jews you see is because Israel is on the most strategic piece of Arab territory on Earth, and as long as it exists Arab power is greatly weakened. It has nothing to do with religion - only geopolitic and Arab desire to resume their expansion.
See it for what it is, and act accordingly.
Pretty soon this waking up thing will verge on psychosis and death, when the delusions of the man falling to his death by hanging hits the end of the rope.
Only a pathological individual would do this kind of thing. As for the French authorities, they are dumber than a box of rocks. They make Inspector Closeau look like Phillip Marlowe.
Hey, don't say that, you'll give rocks a bad name.
Europe in 2006 is like Berlin in 1934. I'm mystified why the remaining Jews of Europe don't pick up and move to Israel or the US while they still can. We (America) would take them in a heartbeat.
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