An open letter to the new French Interior Minister, Gérard Collomb
Mr. Minister,
A 65-year old Jewish woman, a doctor, is attacked while asleep in her
home and tortured horrifically for more than an hour. She lives in a
modest apartment on Rue Vaucouleurs in Paris’s densely populated 11th
arrondissement. The murderer, who climbed into her apartment via the
balcony, attacks with incredible violence, resulting in about twenty
fractures all over her face and body.
He then throws her, dying, out of the third floor window. During the
entire time, the police, three armed officers present in the building
just outside the apartment door, do nothing. The neighbors (several
dozen) can hear the victim’s yells: they too do nothing. The French
media are alerted. They make no queries and do not report the murder.
Her name was Sarah. Sarah Halimi.
Sarah Halimi (Courtesy)
This horrific scene did not take place in 1942, before or after the
“Rafle du Veld’hiv” that rounded up Jews to be handed to the Nazis,
but rather on the night of April 3rd, 2017, in a tiny apartment close
to the “Bataclan” where an Islamist murdered more than 100 French
people. Cries of “Allahu Akbar” accompanied the scene. The following
Sunday, a silent march took place in the area. Youngsters from the
nearby quarters countered it with yells of “death to the Jews” and “we
own kalachnikovs.”
The Paris public prosecutor immediately cautioned against drawing
conclusions about the nature of the crime until the results of the
enquiry were made public. Who knows? An elderly Jewish lady savagely
slaughtered by a 27-year-old Islamist with many priors (drug
trafficking, assault): this could just be a dispute between neighbors…
Nevermind that the murderer, Kada Taore, from Mali, insulted the
victim on a regular basis, and that she had reported to neighbors how
frightened she was of him. “We are at war,” former Prime Minister
Manuel Valls proclaimed, “so that Muslims will no longer feel ashamed
and Jews will no longer be frightened.” Brilliant.
Mr. Minister, you have just taken up your position in a country where
it is once again possible to murder Jews without eliciting much
concern from our fellow Frenchmen and women. By the way, the men who
were in charge before you, both on the left and the right, preferred
not to look any further than the end of the broom with which they
swept the problem under the carpet. None were up to this challenge.
Will you be? On Sunday May 21, on i24NEWS,Sarah Halimi’s brother,
speaking with extraordinary dignity, said, “I have waited seven weeks
before saying anything. The absolute silence surrounding my sister’s
assassination has become unbearable.”