BS: The Halimi Murder

Subject: BS: The Halimi Murder
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Mar 06 - 06:08 PM

The Halimi Murder

Subject: RE: BS: The Halimi Murder
From: Peace
Date: 13 Mar 06 - 06:25 PM

So, what's changed since the Dreyfus Affair?

Subject: RE: BS: The Halimi Murder
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Mar 06 - 07:55 PM

That's a pretty cheap comment. Dreyfus was exonerated and returned to France. You tell me what's changed.

Subject: RE: BS: The Halimi Murder
From: GUEST,Dave'sWife
Date: 13 Mar 06 - 10:04 PM

Ok - horrible crime - terrible thing..but what were you hoping to accompish by posting just the link without comment and then attacking Peace for making a brief but fairly accurate comment that little has changed since the Dreyfuss afair. And, you did all this anonymously.

Subject: RE: BS: The Halimi Murder
From: Paco Rabanne
Date: 14 Mar 06 - 05:28 AM

I would have expected a hell of a lot more responses to this thread than it has had so far, has it been covered elsewhere on mudcat?

Subject: RE: BS: The Halimi Murder
From: John O'L
Date: 14 Mar 06 - 05:35 AM

Is the thread about anti-semitism or the stupidity of thugs?

Subject: RE: BS: The Halimi Murder
From: Paul Burke
Date: 14 Mar 06 - 06:38 AM

Ilan Halimi was tortured and murdered by a gang apparently of Africans from the Ivory Coast in an attempt to extort money from his family. The main suspect at least appears by his name to be a Muslim. It was clearly a racist murder, and Jews were deliberately targetted.

There has been an upsurge of racial violence in Europe in recent years. Jews are of course not the only minority targetted- West Indians, Africans both north and sub-Saharan, Asians of all kinds, Gypsies (Roma) have all suffered too. And of course there has been violence between minorities and the majority population- Paris, Oldham, Bradford...

I believe it has been convenient for governments not to take too much action against racism. It keeps people divided, you can always "clamp down on asylum seekers" to gain a few votes when you need them. As long as most people are getting worked up about foreigners, they aren't asking questions like "who ate my pension", or "why does my kid need a degree to stack supermarket shelves".

Subject: RE: BS: The Halimi Murder
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Mar 06 - 06:54 AM

This appears to have been a murder based primarily on an attempt to extort money from people who were seen as being in a position to pay-off the kidnappers, rather than race hate aas such. That doesn't make it any less disgusting, but the distinction is worth noting.

Next time it could be some relative of a rich Arab, or a footballer, or just about anybody believed to have access to money.

And it could happen in any country, nothing particularly French about it. And the criminals concerned could come from any background.

Subject: RE: BS: The Halimi Murder
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Mar 06 - 07:32 PM

A lot of things 'could' happen. This was a deliberate targetting of a defenseless (and far from rich) young French Jew, who was extensively tortured over a long period of time with plenty of auditory witnesses.

And it was primarilly in a Muslim community with Muslim perpetrators. I think money was involved, but hate was both a motivation and a modifier to the crime. And it happened in France.

Subject: RE: BS: The Halimi Murder
From: Peace
Date: 14 Mar 06 - 07:39 PM

France has had a history of anti-Semitism and turning a blind eye to it. That is what I meant by "What's new."

Subject: RE: BS: The Halimi Murder
From: GUEST,marks
Date: 14 Mar 06 - 08:34 PM

Lets just say the French have been less than proactive in preventing this sort of thing.

Subject: RE: BS: The Halimi Murder
From: Peace
Date: 14 Mar 06 - 09:37 PM

Bien dit!

Subject: RE: BS: The Halimi Murder
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 Mar 06 - 12:51 PM

I think that kidnap and murder are sadly not unkown in most countries. Nor is racism in its various forms, directed at Jews among other minorities.

Equally, there have been people who have fought against those things, in France no less than elsewhere. Motes and beams.

Subject: RE: BS: The Halimi Murder
From: Wolfgang
Date: 15 Mar 06 - 01:10 PM

As Paul has said many groups are the target of hate crimes (in Europe and in France) but if one looks not at the victims but at the culprits a new and worrying picture emerges in France (and that's different from Dreyfus' times):

The culprits of hate crimes with Muslims (gipsies and other minority groups) as victims are nearly exclusively French aborigines, the culprits of hate crimes with Jewish victims are disproportionally often (more often than not) French Muslims.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: The Halimi Murder
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 Mar 06 - 02:51 PM

Source of those sttistics please, Wolfgang. They may be right, but these kind of stattistics can be skewed by such things as differential clear-up rates and so forth.

Not every crime gets reported, not every crime has its perpetrators convicted, not every convicted person is guilty, not every acquitted person is innocent. And the matter of when something is counted as a "hate crime" is tied in with whom the culprit is, and what their motivation was.

Often in these kinds of matters guesses and estimates can get hardened up into something more.

This matters because there have been many times when crimes have been too readily ascribed to members of minority groups, and seen as having some "hate" significance directed at the community from which the victims came. That kind of thing has led to lynchings and similar.

Subject: RE: BS: The Halimi Murder
From: Wolfgang
Date: 15 Mar 06 - 04:54 PM

Where I have read it first is a German language article by DER SPIEGEL which is no longer available on the web for free (one can download it and pay).

But the high incidence of Muslim culprits in anti-Semitic hate crimes is also evident in this study: Antisemitism in the European Union

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: The Halimi Murder
From: Wolfgang
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 07:11 AM

Now, the main culprit got a life sentence (he'll appeal, of course) and his helpers got between six months and 18 years. Two of the 27 accused have been acquitted. The Iranian-French girl who lured the young man into the deadly trap of the "Barbarians" got 9 years.

The "Barbarians" have deliberately targeted Jews. Halimi was only the worst of several cases of torture:

Barbarians of suburbs target French Jews


Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: The Halimi Murder
From: Jack Campin
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 08:10 AM

Quite a lot. Dreyfus was fitted up by agencies of the state, this was just private enterprise doing what private enterprise does best.

The French state has done FAR worse to Muslims than it ever did to Jews. The war in Algeria and the 17 October 1961 massacre in Paris are nowhere near as far in the past as Dreyfus.

Subject: RE: BS: The Halimi Murder
From: robomatic
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 02:23 PM

There is a significant Jewish population in France, and a significant cultural intertie with Jews due to contributions to French culture from French Jews; there is also a tradition of anti-semitism, and a tradition of anti-anti-semitism.

France is a country with extremely strong intellectual currents, so it is entirely consistent with the French approach to the world that their anti-semitism and anti-anti-semitism takes an intellectual form.

Not only that, while in most cases people make a claim that they are anti-zionist not anti-semitic this is a distinction without a difference, I fully believe the French capable of making them distinct and different.

Back in the 70s there was a significant film called 'Z' which was an attempt to generate a broad statement on political violence based on actual events in Greece. The movie is in French. Right at the end of the movie, as the lead fomenter, a general, is being formally indicted of complicity in a homicidal plot, a reporter asks him, "Do you consider yourself like Dreyfus?" and the general immediately retorts "Dreyfus was guilty!" In the days when I saw the flick, it got a major response from the audience, all of whom were familiar with the Dreyfus affair despite being college age Americans.

Subject: RE: BS: The Halimi Murder
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 03:20 PM

The French state has done FAR worse to Muslims than it ever did to Jews.

Currently that is of course true - but it shouldn't be forgotten the "the French state" of the time collaborated with the Germans in the expulsion to the death camps of an estimated 76,000 French Jews.

Subject: RE: BS: The Halimi Murder
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 03:42 PM

Algeria:

Ali la Gioconde?

Subject: RE: BS: The Halimi Murder
From: pdq
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 04:04 PM

The French have had a bone to pick with the followers of Islam a for a long, long time...


"Charles Martel (Latin: Carolus Martellus) (ca. 688 – 22 October 741), called Charles the Hammer, was a Frankish military and political leader, who served as Mayor of the Palace under the Merovingian kings and ruled de facto during an interregnum (737–43) at the end of his life, using the title Duke and Prince of the Franks... He is perhaps best remembered for winning the Battle of Tours in 732, in which he defeated an invading Muslim army and halted northward Islamic expansion in western Europe."

Subject: RE: BS: The Halimi Murder
From: Jack Campin
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 04:55 PM

The French state has done FAR worse to Muslims than it ever did to Jews.
Currently that is of course true - but it shouldn't be forgotten the "the French state" of the time collaborated with the Germans in the expulsion to the death camps of an estimated 76,000 French Jews.

Look up the casualty figures for Algeria. FAR greater than the Jewish casualties of Vichy by any estimate.

But both Muslim and Jewish suffering under the French state is eclipsed by what they did to the part of the Congo they controlled after emulating Leopold's system.

Subject: RE: BS: The Halimi Murder
From: Amos
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 06:45 PM

THe dance of barbarians will not make sense no matter how often you look at it. As soon try to analyze the love song of jackals or the poetry of wolverines.


A

Subject: RE: BS: The Halimi Murder
From: heric
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 06:48 PM

It's a very disturbing article. It gives some (tiny) insight into the parallel thread running about hate speech restrictions in Europe.

Subject: RE: BS: The Halimi Murder
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 06:51 PM

That's true of course, Jack - I was thinking in terms of what was done in France itself.

Subject: RE: BS: The Halimi Murder
From: pdq
Date: 11 Jul 09 - 07:05 PM

...from the article that Wolfgang cited:


"...the kidnapping of Ilan Halimi, whose tortured body was found on wasteland, has shocked a country which is haunted by a painful history of anti-semitism.

Yalda's only moment of doubt came when she heard Halimi's shrieks as he was carried away by thugs in balaclava helmets. "He screamed for two minutes, with a high-pitched voice like a girl," she told investigators.

She soon forgot, however. On Halimi's first night in captivity, she and her boyfriend celebrated in a hotel room paid for by the kidnappers.

Forget the French idyll portrayed in such books as A Year in Provence. France is being forced to confront her dark side as details emerge of horrific crimes in the suburbs.

Testimony from this grim underbelly, the immigrant banlieues — literally "places of banishment" — has fortified the elite's view of young immigrants on the wrong side of the Paris ring road as "barbarians at the gate".

For years the Parisian establishment has quaked at the prospect of angry hordes invading their affluent heartland and last week that nightmare came true as gangs of hooded youths robbed and bludgeoned white students attending anti-government demonstrations.

Disquiet about the spread of barbarism across the boulevard périphérique has been fuelled by the chilling story of Yalda.

The gang she worked for was known as "les Barbares", the Barbarians, and included blacks, Arabs and whites from Portugal and France.

Barbarians seemed an appropriate name. The shocking cruelty inflicted on Halimi seemed to have little to do with efforts to extract money from his anguished family. It evoked the sadistic moral universe of A Clockwork Orange, the novel by Anthony Burgess, with a dose of anti-semitism thrown in.

Thanks to Yalda's charms, Halimi was imprisoned and tortured with acid and cigarette burns for more than three weeks in the heart of a council estate.

More than 30 neighbours in the building knew what was happening but said nothing about the crime, part of a worrying wave of attacks against Jews all over the country..."

Subject: RE: BS: The Halimi Murder
From: robomatic
Date: 12 Jul 09 - 01:40 PM

I was ignorant of the details of the Ilan Halimi case, the posted link at the head of this thread does not work for me. I posted my comment on French Anti-Semitism not based on this case, which I finally looked up via Wikipedia. I presume the reason it appears here at Mudcat is because the malefactors have recently been sentenced.

It is truly horrific, but I feel it is unrelated to historic 'French' anti-semitism.