Denial of terrorism

Search of houses of Muslims who tortured Jewish man to death reveals Hamas funding docs & Salafist decrees

Muslim killers tried to kidnap several Jews because "they were rich"
February 23, 2006



Ilan Halimi

MIM: Ilan Halimi was a victim of terrorism. He was 1 of 4 Jews who had been targetted by the gang - who "recited Koranic verses" during telephone calls to his family who told them to "go to the synagouge to get money". According to police it was known that Halimi was being held in the immigrant housing project for 3 weeks , and no one attempted to intervene. Halami was photographed in positions meant to invoke images from Abu Ghraib. Ilan was held for three weeks in the basement of an 11 story apartment building not far from Paris.

"...For three weeks, the "Barbarians" detained and tortured Ilan Halimi. When he was found on February 13, he was naked, handcuffed after being dumped near railway tracks in a Parisian suburb. He suffered from severe burns covering 80 percent of his body. Traces of cigarette burns, iron burns, and various cuts (made by knives and scissors) covered his body. He passed away in an ambulance before reaching the hospital..." http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3220564,00.html

"They acted with indescribable cruelty," the judiciary police chief leading the investigation said. "They kept him naked and tied up for weeks. They cut him and in the end poured flammable liquid on him and set him alight."


It is highly probable that residents of the building knew what was going on. Halimi's mother related that the elevator in the complex had stayed put for hours on the floor where he was being held and that neighbors reported hearing noises from the cellar. The concierge of complex was also arrested.

"...The neighbours or the relatives of the kidnappers must have heard of what was going on, but no one budged," said Halimi's sister, Yael. "People knew. Did no one feel any pity for him?" http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10369765

"...According to an unofficial source, police came to realize that many in the building knew what was going on, but did not act since it appears everyone knew the victim was Jewish..."

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3220564,00.html

"...Haaretz reported that a police source said the gang is a group of childhood friends who grew up in Bagneux, a suburb south of Paris..."


MIM: According to the NY Sun:

"... In order to convince Halimi's parents their son had been kidnapped, the abductors borrowed a trick from Islamist kidnappers who abduct Westerners in the Middle East: They sent a picture of the young man being threatened by a gun and holding a newspaper to prove the date and time..."

On February 11, four days after the abductors stopped communicating with the family, Halimi was found, still alive, not far from a railway line at Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois, about 15 kilometers south of Bagneux.

He was naked, handcuffed, and bleeding profusely. He was incapable of speaking. His entire body - or "80% of it," according to police - had been butchered. He died of his wounds on the way to the hospital, just a few minutes after he was discovered..."http://www.nysun.com/article/27948

-----------------------------

MIM: According to a report in the Boston Globe:

"...The kidnappers, who called themselves "The Barbarians," beat, burned, and mutilated Halimi during 24 days of captivity in the cellar of a tough housing project in Bagneux, north of the capital, according to investigators.

The gang allegedly taunted Halimi's family and a rabbi with anti-Semitic epithets and recited Koranic verses during telephone calls and e-mails demanding wildly diverging amounts of ransom that never were collected. The suspects also sent photos of the victim with a gun to his head, bound and blindfolded, apparently mimicking images of hostages and abused prisoners in Iraq.

Those actions and others led prosecutors to add aggravating circumstances of anti-Semitism to the charges sought against some of the suspects.

"When the family said they didn't have money, they told them to go to a synagogue to get the money," said Sammy Ghozlan, a Jewish leader who is a retired police chief. "This gang massacred this young man. They cut off ears and fingers. It was like they had a trophy, a Jewish kid, and everybody abused him."

In Monday's edition of Israel's Haaretz newspaper, Halimi's mother criticized the police for moving too slowly and for ignoring the anti-Semitic motives.

"If Ilan hadn't been Jewish, he wouldn't have been murdered," Ruth Halimi told Haaretz..."

http://www.judeoscope.ca/breve.php3?id_breve=0813

----------------------------------------------

Tuesday 21 February 2006
Halimi murder: House searches produce pro-Palestinian, Salafi documents

Judeoscope.ca - French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy revealed that house-searches of suspects related to the brutal murder and torture of a young Jewish man, 23-year-old Ilan Halimi, produced Salafi (radical Islamic) and pro-Palestinian documents.

According to Sarkozy, documents of support for the Comité de bienfaisance et de secours aux Palestiniens (CBSP) were uncovered. The organization is accused by Israel and the US of sponsoring Hamas. Though the US ordered in 2003 that its assets be frozen, the CBSP is not featured on European lists of organizations considered to be terrorist. The other documents found in the house-searches were described by Sarkozy as Salafi decrees.

The French government considers the murder to be an anti-Semitic crime.

-----------------------

Translation MIM:

One of the suspects said that the gang had kidnapped Halimi "because he is a Jew and the Jews are rich and they stick together in a community". The perpetrators demanded a ransom from the father and sent him pictures depicting the torture of his son. According to the investigators these also contained anti semitic slogans. The father said in desperation that he had no way of paying the ransom, but that was of no use.

"...Een van de beklaagden zei dat de bende Ilan Halimi had ontvoerd ,,omdat hij jood is en de joden rijk zijn en als gemeenschap aan elkaar hangen". De daders eisten een losgeld van de vader en stuurden hem beelden met martelscènes van zijn zoon. Daarop stonden volgens de onderzoekers ook antisemitische slogans. De vader liet wanhopig weten dat hij het hoge losgeld niet kon betalen, maar dat baatte niet.

http://www.krux.nl/headlines.asp?lStrAction=sendAfriend&lIntType=0&lIntNewsId=15048
---------------------------------------------------

"This is anti-Jewish hatred," said Sammy Ghozlan, a former police officer who set up a Jewish security group and is known for his outspokenness against antisemitic violence. "You see it in the choice of the target and in the way they treated him when they had him."

Halimi's mother, well known in Parisian Jewish circles because she works at one of the capital's main communal centers, accused police of ignoring this motive for fear of upsetting Muslims.

If her son "hadn't been Jewish, he wouldn't have been killed," she told Ha'aretz. "We told the police there were at least three attempted kidnappings of young Jews, but they kept insisting that the motives were purely criminal."

Ghozlan said she was upset that the police had ordered her not to respond to messages from the gang — which numbered more than 600. He also said that the investigators tried but failed to localize the calls through wiretaps and tracing.

Sarkozy told the parliament that in the homes of some suspects, the police had found "salafist" literature. By this he was referring to an ideological strain of North African Islamists that has, at times, been linked to Al Qaeda. He also said that police discovered fliers from a pro-Palestinian nongovernmental organization that had been listed by the U.S. Treasury Department as a Hamas front in August 2003 (French authorities investigated the NGO, but they found no evidence of ties to Hamas).

http://www.forward.com/articles/7393

----------------------------------------------------

MIM: The African French "alleged comedian" known as Dieudonne' has been inciting Jew hatred in Paris for years. Legal proceedings have been instigated against him as a result, and one Jewish community spokesman has said that there could be a direct link between the barbaric attack on Ilan Halami by the African Muslims who were 'inspired' by Dieudonne's anti semitic diatribes which he passes off as his 'act'.

"...Sammy Ghozlan, head of a French anti-Semitism monitoring group, has said that the speech of an "alleged comedian" influenced the killers of Ilan Halimi, the young Jewish man murdered in a Paris suburb last week.

"The tortures inflicted upon Ilan could only be perpetrated by criminals motivated by anti-Jewish hatred instigated by a certain comedian who has made headlines," Sammy Ghozlan said in an interview with European Jewish Press.

Ghozlan made no direct reference to Dieudonne, a controversial black comedian who has been accused of repeated anti-Semitic remarks and who generated outrage among French Jews.

Dieudonne, who is of African origin, asserted that Jews had played a "central role" in the 15th-century slave trade. In December 2003 he appeared on French TV dressed as an Orthodox Jew and performed the Nazi salute while shouting "IsraHeil".

He is to stand trial for comments made in 2003 in which he declared that Jews were "a sect, a rip-off".

"One cannot treat a human being like Ilan was treated if one isn't an animal with a deep anti-Jewish hatred transmitted by racist declarations," Gozhlan added.

"This is the climate in the suburbs: hatred of the Republic, of police forces and of Jews..."

Ghozlan said there was a shift in the character of anti-Semitism in France since mid-2005.

"The perpetrators of such acts are no longer the same people. Before they were mainly of Arab-Muslim origin who expressed solidarity with the Palestinian people and as such became anti-Semites. Today we have noticed that it is no longer the same. People of African origin are also becoming quite violent," Gozhlan, a 63-year-old former police superintendent, said. .."


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Suspect arrested in Jew torture case

http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/411749/665572

Ivory Coast police have arrested the suspected leader of a gang accused in the kidnapping and torture death of a Jewish man near Paris and will hand him over to France, officials in both countries said on Thursday.

French police accuse Youssef Fofana, a French citizen, of leading a gang that killed 23-year-old Ilan Halimi in a case that has triggered a public outcry over anti-Semitism in France.

Halimi was found naked, tortured and burned south of Paris after being held for three weeks by a gang demanding a large ransom. He died of his injuries shortly afterwards.

Police arrested Fofana in Ivory Coast's main city Abidjan late on Wednesday and said they would turn him over to Paris. France's prime minister said this would happen within hours.

"In this odious case, it's important that the justice can be served very quickly," French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin told Canal Plus television.

Villepin's office in Paris issued a statement saying the prime minister had spoken by telephone with Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo.

"The latter confirmed that Youssef Fofana will be repatriated to France in the next few hours, within the framework of an operation of judicial support between the two countries," the statement said, suggesting there would be no lengthy extradition procedures.

Fofana, born in France to parents from former colony Ivory Coast, told police Halimi's murder had not been planned, an Ivorian officer involved with the case told Reuters.

"He said there was no plan to kill him. He only wanted the money," the officer told Reuters on condition of anonymity. "We will listen to what he has to say and then the French police will leave with him."

Outcry

French police have said Youssef Fofana called himself the "brain of the barbarians" and accuse his gang of trying to kidnap six other people, four of them Jewish.

Thirteen people have been indicted in Paris in the case, of which 11 are being held. Five more have been detained in connection with the case elsewhere in France and a suspect has been arrested in Belgium.

Initially police said Halimi's murder was motivated by greed, not religion, but this week French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy denounced it as an anti-Semitic crime targeted at Jewish people because they were regarded as having money.

He said police had linked some suspects to documents supporting Palestinian and arch-conservative Islamic causes.

The brutal murder shocked the French public and suggestions that the government had been slow to react caused a furore.

President Jacques Chirac and Villepin were both due to attend a memorial ceremony for Halimi at Paris's main synagogue later on Thursday.

Interim Ivory Coast Prime Minister Charles Konan Banny told a French Jewish radio station he did not think the crime had an anti-Semitic connotation.

"I think one should not dignify it with that name. It was a villainous crime, odious," he told Radio Shalom.

France has Europe's largest Muslim and Jewish minorities, but Muslims number about 5 million and Jews just 600,000.

Many Arabs and Jews are immigrants and live uneasily side-by-side in poor neighbourhoods. Disaffected Muslim youths were widely blamed for a wave of anti-Semitic violence earlier this decade.

French police have said Fofana's gang used young women to lure targets to locations where they could be kidnapped. The woman who lured Halimi has given herself up to police.

-------------------------------------------------

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2051893,00.html

Jews claim police hid killers' motive to appease ghetto

From Charles Bremner in Paris





THE torture and murder of a young Jewish man in Paris triggered outrage among Jewish leaders yesterday as the Government sought to prevent the affair from inflaming emotions in the Muslim-dominated housing estates of France.

Dominique de Villepin, the Prime Minister, and his ministers promised that justice would be done after the parents of Ilan Halimi, 23, who was held captive for three weeks on an immigrant estate, accused the police of playing down the anti-Semitic motives of his kidnappers.





Voicing the anger felt among the Jewish population, Radio Shalom, a station in Paris, said that M Halimi had "been made to pay for the (Danish) cartoons of Muhammad and Abu Ghraib", the prison where US forces tortured Iraqi captives.

M Halimi, who worked in a telephone shop, died shortly after being found ten days ago naked and bound on a suburban roadside. Police denied any racial aspect in the kidnapping and ransom demands, but on Monday investigators added racial hatred to the kidnapping and murder charges that six men and a woman in police custody are facing.

The kidnappers are alleged to have referred to M Halimi's Jewish background in their telephone and e-mail demands to the family for ransom, and one of the young torturers was reported by accomplices to have stubbed out a cigarette on M Halimi's forehead while voicing his hatred for Jews.

The seven are alleged to be part of a loose gang of young estate-dwellers who had already made six unsuccessful kidnap attempts against residents of Paris. Nicolas Sarkozy, the Interior Minister, told Parliament yesterday that four out of the six were Jewish.

Two officers flew yesterday to Ivory Coast in pursuit of Yussef Fofana, 25, the alleged ring-leader who calls himself "Brain of the Barbarians", who flew out of Paris after M Halimi was found. The gang had used women to entrap their victims by chatting them up and arranging dates with them.

One intended victim, a 50-year-old Jewish man identified as Michael, told how he had been lured to an estate and knocked out with a blow to the head from a pistol butt. He had been saved after residents called police, but spent a week in hospital. According to unconfirmed reports in the Jewish community of Paris, at least one family has recently paid a ransom for the release of a kidnapped child.

As M Sarkozy visited M Halimi's parents yesterday, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre sent him a message saying: "These acts are a test for Europe. Jihadi violence, hatred and anti-Semitism must be prevented from taking root in French soil."

Ruth Halimi said that her son might still be alive had the police not evaded the nature of his kidnapping as they were negotiating over ransom.

"We told the police that there had been at least three other attempted abductions of young Jews, but they persisted in considering the motives purely criminal because they are afraid of reviving a clash with the Muslims," she said.

Police said that the gang appeared to have been driven by greed and the crude racial stereotypes that prevailed on the estates. Feuj, slang for Jew, is a common insult in the ghetto-like estates. The group had been influenced by television, particularly the Abu Ghraib torture pictures, officers said.

In Parliament, M Sarkozy played down the kidnapping as a religious or political act. "These thugs acted first of all out of sordid criminal motives in a search for money, but they were convinced that ‘Jews have money'," he said.

M de Villepin was reported yesterday to have reprimanded Pascal Clément, the Justice Minister, for quoting one of the accused kidnappers as saying M Halimi had been abducted "because he was Jewish, and Jews are rich". His discretion reflects official fear of stirring the anger that drove thousands of young men from Muslim-dominated estates to a frenzy of fire-bombing last autumn.

France has Europe's biggest Muslim and biggest Jewish populations. The actions of the gang contrast with a big drop in reported anti-Semitic acts in France over the past year.


----------------



French 'anti-Jew gang chief' held

The suspected head of an anti-Semitic gang which kidnapped, tortured and killed a young French Jew near Paris has been arrested in Ivory Coast.
Youssouf Fofana, 26, is in the custody of French police who went to Ivory Coast to question him.

The French authorities had issued an international warrant for his arrest after he had left the country.

Victim Ilan Halimi died after being found naked, bound and gagged in a crime that shocked France.

The 23-year-old man had been held for ransom for three weeks.

He was dumped near the Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois train station near Paris on 13 February, and found lying in agony with horrific injuries to his body. He died on the way to hospital.

French ministers believe he may have been a victim of anti-Semitism.

'Brains of the barbarians'

President Jacques Chirac is expected to lead mourners at a memorial service for Mr Halimi in Paris later on Thursday.

More than 1,000 people, mostly Jews, marched in the capital on Sunday to condemn the killing.


Mr Fofana, who is of Ivorian origin, is believed to have fled France before police made several arrests last week.

Mr Halimi's family were sent ransom demands by e-mail and text messages from the kidnap gang, whose leader called himself "brains of the barbarians".

Prosecutors initially ruled out anti-Semitism, saying the gang - believed to be behind six other botched kidnappings - were unemployed and motivated by money.

But Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin told a meeting of Jewish community leaders on Monday that the judge handling the case was investigating leads pointing to an anti-Semitic attack.

"We will do everything we can to arrest the authors of this barbarous crime and bring them to justice," he added

MIM: A sketch of the woman who is helped the gang lure Halimi to the housing estate. After her picture was shown in France she turned herself in and gave information to the police leading to the capture of other gang member.

_________________
"The conversion of the entire population to Islam and the extinction of every form of dissent is the ideal of the Muslim State - This is Islamic Peace"

A moderate Moslem is one who sends others blow themselves up.

Last edited by Alien2thisWorld on Tue Jul 11, 2006 6:49 am; edited 1 time in total

FRENCH MARCH AGAINST RACISM AFTER JEW'S KILLING

By Laure Bretton

PARIS (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of people marched through Paris and other French cities on Sunday to denounce racism and anti-Semitism following the torture and killing of a young Jewish kidnap victim.

Politicians from left and right joined the marchers under banners declaring "France united against barbarism" to express their shock over the gang killing, which Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy has denounced as an anti-Semitic crime.

Mobile phone salesman Ilan Halimi, 23, was found naked, with burns and stab wounds, south of Paris earlier this month after being held for three weeks by a gang demanding a large ransom. He died of his injuries shortly afterwards.

Youssef Fofana, a French citizen, has been arrested in Ivory Coast on suspicion of leading the gang that kidnapped him.

"There is no political connotation (to the march). This is a demonstration by the people of France who are more than outraged by what happened," said Joseph Sitruk, France's chief rabbi.

"We are here also to say that all racist crimes are unacceptable in our society and that we must be very vigilant because it is a situation which is starting to be worrying," said Jean-Michel Quillardet, head of the Grand Orient of France.

Thousands more people marched in other cities. In the southwestern city of Bordeaux, protesters marched behind a photograph of Halimi reading: "Rest in peace, Ilan."

Marchers in Paris included Sarkozy and Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy from the centre right, and Socialist Party leader Francois Hollande and former Prime Minister Lionel Jospin form the left wing.

Independent right-wing politician Philippe de Villers was prevented from taking part. Police escorted him away because his presence angered many of the Paris marchers.

Tension ran high at times in Paris as a group of angry young people, some of them wearing masks, chanted violent slogans against Fofana. Police kept a close watch nearby.

FRENCH PEOPLE IN SHOCK

The murder has shocked France, which has Europe's largest Muslim and Jewish minorities. Muslims number about 5 million and Jews 600,000.

Many Arabs and Jews are immigrants and live uneasily side-by-side in poor neighborhoods. Disaffected Muslim youths were widely blamed for a wave of anti-Semitic violence earlier this decade.

Thirteen people have been indicted in Paris in the case, of whom 11 are being held. Five more have been detained elsewhere in France and a suspect has been arrested in Belgium.

Fofana is expected to be handed over to French authorities once legal formalities are sorted out.

French police have said Fofana called himself the "brain of the barbarians" and accuse his gang of trying to kidnap six other people, four of them Jewish.

President Jacques Chirac and Villepin attended a memorial ceremony for Halimi on Thursday. Interim Ivory Coast Prime Minister Charles Konan Banny has said he does not think the crime had an anti-Semitic connotation.

_________________
"The conversion of the entire population to Islam and the extinction of every form of dissent is the ideal of the Muslim State - This is Islamic Peace"

A moderate Moslem is one who sends others blow themselves up.

Muslim terror gang operated with impunity since 2004

Muslim terror gang which kidnapped and tortured Jewish man to death operated with impunity since 2004


Chirac smiling at memorial service for Ilan Halimi at Paris synagouge 2006


Chirac welcoming Arafat to Paris 2005

For more on the Halimi story see:

http://treyjackson.typepad.com/junction/

Report: Halimi killers targeted others

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1139395487149&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Associated Press, THE JERUSALEM POST Feb. 25, 2006

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The gang that kidnapped, tortured and killed a young Parisian Jew had also threatened several prominent businessmen, lawyers and a well-known humanitarian activist, a French newspaper reported Saturday.

The daily Liberation reported that the group behind the killing, which authorities have linked to anti-Semitism, tried to extort money from a founder of Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders.

Also targeted were the director of the Arte TV channel, a Paris lawyer and the head of a supermarket chain, the newspaper reported, citing police officials.

Police investigating the killing earlier this month of 23-year-old Ilan Halimi have made several arrests.

The brutal killing has revived concerns of anti-Semitism in France. A march against racism and anti-Semitism, with numerous public figures, including government ministers, was planned for Sunday. On Thursday, President Jacques Chirac attended a memorial ceremony for Halimi at the Paris synagogue.

Halimi, a cell phone salesman, was kidnapped Jan. 21, and his family later received ransom demands, starting with one for around $537,000. The young man was found naked, handcuffed and covered with burn marks on Feb. 13 near railroad tracks south of Paris. He died on his way to a hospital.

Rony Brauman, a founder of the humanitarian group Medecins Sans Frontieres, and who is of Jewish origin, confirmed on LCI television that he had been the object of an extortion attempt in 2004.

However, Brauman said he did not believe anti-Semitism played a role in his case and those of others who were threatened for money in the same period.

"The question of being Jewish or not had no incidence. ... It was pure extortion," he said on LCI. He said that in April 2004 he received a letter demanding some $350,000 or his life.

Liberation quoted him as saying that the letter contained a photograph of armed, hooded men in front of Brauman's home, south of Paris. Several months later, two Molotov cocktails exploded in the courtyard of his home and a gunshot was fired at his door, he told LCI.

Arte director Jerome Clement said on France 2 TV that he received a video cassette showing hooded men firing bazookas and machine guns and saying, "Look what will happen to you if you don't pay the ransom."

Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said Tuesday that Halimi's attackers were primarily motivated by greed. "But they believed, and I quote, 'that Jews have money,"' he said. "That's called anti-Semitism."

He said the gang tried to kidnap six other people since December, four of them Jewish.

The suspected gang leader, Youssef Fofana, a French citizen, was arrested Wednesday in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, and France is seeking his extradition. Fourteen people have been placed under investigation - a step short of being charged - in the case, and two more people were detained Friday for questioning.


_________________
"The conversion of the entire population to Islam and the extinction of every form of dissent is the ideal of the Muslim State - This is Islamic Peace"

A moderate Moslem is one who sends others blow themselves up.

Muslim killers relatives and neighbors 'dropped in' ...

Muslim killers relatives and neighbors 'dropped in' to torture French Jewish man held in apartment basement - gang tied to Hamas

February 25, 2006

MIM: Had the murdered man been a Muslim, or a Koran been found discarded on near a railroad station (as was a dying Ilan Halimi) , Paris and cities in the rest of Europe would have been burning now. The gang appears to have been operating since 2004 when they reportedly attempted a series of kidnappings of journalists and known figures, many of them Jews. Most horrifically, the collective sadism which the Muslim resident in the building showed (by not alerting police to the crime), and the complicity of family and friends of the killers ,is further proof that Muslims are living in a parallel universe, and that exposure to life in the West has not mitigated their murderous Islamist intent. Halimi's Muslim killers were French born, and behaved in the same way as Al Zarqawi's henchmen in Iraq. They were also directly tied to Hamas and targetted Halimi because he was a Jew.

Ilan Halimi was a victim of terrorism.

"...Anti-Semitism in the Muslim dominated suburbs of Paris and other French cities is all-encompassing. As Nidra Poller related in Thursday's Wall Street Journal, "One of the most troubling aspects of this affair is the probable involvement of relatives and neighbors, beyond the immediate circle of the gang [of kidnappers], who were told about the Jewish hostage and dropped in to participate in the torture."

It appears that Ilan Halimi's murderers had some connection to Hamas. Tuesday, French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said that police found propaganda published by the Palestinian Charity Committee or the CBSP at the home of one of the suspects. The European Jewish Press reported this week that Israel has alleged that the organization is a front group for Palestinian terrorists and that in August 2003 the US government froze the organization's US bank accounts, accusing it of links with Hamas.
Halimi's family alleges that throughout the 20 days of Ilan's captivity, the French police refused to take the anti-Semitic motivations of the kidnappers into account. The investigators insisted on viewing his kidnap as a garden variety kidnap-for-ransom criminal case, which they said generally involves no threat to the life of the captive. The police maintained their refusal to investigate the anti-Semitic motivations of the kidnappers in spite of the fact that in their e-mail and telephone communications with Ilan's family, his captors repeatedly referred to his Judaism, and on at least one occasion recited verses from the Koran while Ilan was heard screaming in agony in the background. The family alleges that if the police had been willing to acknowledge that Ilan was abducted because he was Jewish, they would have recognized that his life was in clear and immediate danger and acted with greater urgency..."

---------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1139395477657&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Column One: Ilan Halimi and Israel


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Caroline Glick, THE JERUSALEM POST Feb. 24, 2006

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ilan Halimi's barbarous murder in France should awaken all Jews to the most significant truth of our times: Today, every Jew in the world is on the front lines of war.

As was the case 70 years ago, every Jew today is a target for our enemies, who shout from every soapbox and prove at every opportunity that their goal is the annihilation of the Jewish people. From 1933-1945, the enemy was Nazi Germany. Today, the enemy is political Islam. Its call for jihad aimed at annihilating the Jews and dominating the world is answered by millions of people throughout the world.

Among the lessons of the Holocaust, there is one that is almost never mentioned. That lesson is that it is possible, and indeed fairly easy to exterminate the Jews. The fact that the Holocaust happened proves that it is absolutely possible for the Jewish people to be wiped off the map - just as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hamas leader Khaled Mashal promise.

The story of Ilan Halimi's murder at the hands of a terrorist gang of French Muslims brings to the surface the various pathologies now converging to make the prospect of annihilating all Jews seem possible to our enemies. First, there are the murderers who took such apparent pleasure and felt such pride in the fact that for 20 days they tortured their Jewish hostage to death.

This makes sense. Anti-Semitism in the Muslim dominated suburbs of Paris and other French cities is all-encompassing. As Nidra Poller related in Thursday's Wall Street Journal, "One of the most troubling aspects of this affair is the probable involvement of relatives and neighbors, beyond the immediate circle of the gang [of kidnappers], who were told about the Jewish hostage and dropped in to participate in the torture."

It appears that Ilan Halimi's murderers had some connection to Hamas. Tuesday, French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said that police found propaganda published by the Palestinian Charity Committee or the CBSP at the home of one of the suspects. The European Jewish Press reported this week that Israel has alleged that the organization is a front group for Palestinian terrorists and that in August 2003 the US government froze the organization's US bank accounts, accusing it of links with Hamas.
Halimi's family alleges that throughout the 20 days of Ilan's captivity, the French police refused to take the anti-Semitic motivations of the kidnappers into account. The investigators insisted on viewing his kidnap as a garden variety kidnap-for-ransom criminal case, which they said generally involves no threat to the life of the captive. The police maintained their refusal to investigate the anti-Semitic motivations of the kidnappers in spite of the fact that in their e-mail and telephone communications with Ilan's family, his captors repeatedly referred to his Judaism, and on at least one occasion recited verses from the Koran while Ilan was heard screaming in agony in the background. The family alleges that if the police had been willing to acknowledge that Ilan was abducted because he was Jewish, they would have recognized that his life was in clear and immediate danger and acted with greater urgency.

Like the police, the French government waited an entire week after Ilan was found naked, with cuts and burns over 80 percent of his body by a train station in suburban Paris, before acknowledging the anti-Semitic nature of the crime. According to the press reports, the French government was at least partially motivated to suppress the issue of anti-Semitism because it feared inflaming the passions of the French Muslims who make up between 10 to 13 percent of the French population and comprise a quarter of the population under 25 years old. And yet, now that the French government has acknowledged that the crime was motivated by hatred of Jews, it is behaving responsibly in pursuing the murderers and decrying the attack on French Jewry.

In addition to the exterminationist anti-Semitism of Ilan's murderers and the unwillingness of the French authorities to acknowledge the anti-Semitic nature of the crime until it was too late, there is one more aspect of the case that bears note. That is Israel's reaction to the atrocity. In short, there has been absolutely no official Israeli reaction to the abduction, torture and murder of a Jew in France by a predominantly Muslim terrorist gang that kidnapped, tortured and murdered him because he was a Jew.

No Israeli government minister, official or spokesman has condemned his murder. No Israeli official has demanded that the French authorities investigate why the police refused to take anti-Semitism into account during Ilan's captivity. No Israeli official flew to Paris to participate in Ilan's funeral or any other memorial or demonstration in his memory. The Foreign Ministry's Web site makes no mention of his murder. The Israeli Embassy in Paris - which has been without an ambassador for the past several months - only publicly expressed its condolences to the Halimi family on February 23, 10 days after Ilan was found. This, when the French Jewish community considers Halimi's murder to have been the greatest calamity to have befallen it in recent years; when aliya rates rose 25% last year; and when Ilan's mother has told reporters that her son had planned to make aliya soon and was just staying in France to save money to finance his move to Israel. For its part, as Michelle Mazel pointed out in The Jerusalem Post yesterday, the French press has noted that the Israeli media has not given the story prominent coverage. Halimi's murder has not appeared on the front pages of the papers or at the top of the television or radio broadcasts.
Although appalling, the absence of an official Israeli outcry against Halimi's murder is not the least surprising. Today, the unelected Kadima interim government, like the Israeli media, is doing everything in its power to lull the Israeli people into complacency towards the storm of war raging around us. Against the daily barrages of Kassam rockets on southern Israel; nervous reports of al-Qaida setting up shop in Judea, Samaria and Gaza; the ascension of Hamas to power in the Palestinian Authority; and Iran's threats of nuclear annihilation, Israel's citizenry, under the spell of Kadima and the media, appears intent on ignoring the dangers and pretending that what happens to Jews in France has nothing to do with us.

Israel's societal meekness accords well with Kadima's ideology. Its creed was best expressed by Foreign Minister, Justice Minister and Immigration Minister Tzipi Livni last month at the Herzliya Conference and is best characterized as "conditional Zionism." In her speech, Livni explained that Israel's international legitimacy is conditional. Unless a Palestinian state is established in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, she warned, Israel will lose its legitimacy as a Jewish state.

So for Livni, Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Shimon Peres and the rest of the Kadima gang, unlike every other people in the world, the Jewish people does not have an inherent, natural right to exist as a free, sovereign and independent people in its homeland. For Kadima, the Jewish people's right to self-determination in our land years is conditional on our enemies' acceptance of our right to be here.

Kadima's conditional Zionism finds expression in its policies in Judea and Samaria. There, the gist of the government's actions is that the only people with inherent human rights in Judea and Samaria are the Arabs.

Throughout the areas, the government, backed by the post-Zionist courts, prohibits Jews from building on land that Jews own. Today, as Moshe Rosenbaum, the mayor of Beit El explains, even receiving a permit to build an extension on a standing house or additional classrooms in a school is all but impossible.

While Olmert and Internal Security Minister Gideon Ezra have repeatedly condemned Jews for allegedly cutting down trees owned by Arabs in Judea and Samaria, the government has said nothing and done nothing to stop the wholesale destruction of Jewish orchards and national forests in the areas by Palestinians. Over the past several months, in the vicinity of Gush Etzion alone, thousands of Jewish-owned trees have been chopped down by Arab vandals. Two national forests have been laid to waste. Busy directing their energies and attentions at delegitimizing the Israelis who live in Judea and Samaria, the government has ignored Israel's enemies.

And so, as Kassam attacks against Israel multiply by the day and Hamas leaders hold Jew-hating love-fests with Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Khamenaei in Teheran, Olmert assured us Wednesday that Hamas is not a strategic threat to Israel.

When the Israeli government itself is claiming Jewish rights are not inherent but rather defined and granted by others, it can surprise no one the government has ignored Halimi's murder.

Luckily for both Israel and the Jews around the world, the current leadership is not our only option. We have other leaders, the most prominent among them being Likud Chairman Binyamin Netanyahu and former IDF chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. (res.) Moshe Ya'alon. Both of these men understand well that the two most important lessons for the Jews from the Holocaust are that we must never grant anyone else the authority, legitimacy or power to define who we are or what our rights are, and we are all responsible for one another.

On Tuesday, Ya'alon, who is currently based at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, came to Jerusalem for the day to speak at a conference on the strategic implications of Hamas's takeover of the Palestinian Authority. There Ya'alon explained what he considers to be the key to Israel's security. Israel, he said, has the military capability to defeat its enemies. But for Israel to be able to take the steps it needs to take to win the war being waged for our destruction, Ya'alon explained that first we need to accept the fact that we have an intrinsic, unconditional right to our land and our sovereignty. Once we understand that our rights our unconditional, we will understand that we have an obligation to wage war against those who work for our destruction. That is, Ya'alon explained that for Israel to survive, we need to return to our unconditional Zionism.

Sir Martin Gilbert, perhaps the preeminent British historian of World War II, has said, "The interesting thing about history is that it always repeats itself."

As was the case in World War II, today the Jewish people in Israel and throughout the world is being targeted for annihilation by an enemy bent on world domination. Ilan Halimi's monstrous murder is just the latest sign of this disturbing reality. Today, as 70 years ago, the Jews are disserved by poor and weak leaders who refuse to see the dangers.

But if we learn from history and we assess our options, we will see that history needn't repeat itself. It is within our power to reverse the course of our all too repetitious past.


_________________
"The conversion of the entire population to Islam and the extinction of every form of dissent is the ideal of the Muslim State - This is Islamic Peace"

A moderate Moslem is one who sends others blow themselves up.

Column One: Ilan Halimi and Israel

Friends,

I wrote you about Ilan Halimi long before reports appeared
in the newspapers and the crime was acknowledged as one more
Muslim
atrocity against Jews. Jewish friends in Paris whisper to me
in horror at the sheer barbarism of the crime, in which an
innocent young
man was held for twenty days, found with all his fingers cut
off, and burns and bruises over 80% of his body. Because he
was a Jew.
The Jews and other decent French people have taken to the
streets of Paris to finally, finally, openly protest Muslim
anti Semitism and
Nazi-like barbarism. But not a peep is heard here in
Israel, even though the murderers were connected to a
Palestinian terrorist
organization. Because official Israel just doesn't want to
acknowledge this has nothing to do with land, or occupation,
or any of the
other excuses we'd like so much to believe. It doesn't want
to acknowledge that every Jew is now a target, and that
Israel is the
bull's eye.

Below, Caroline Glick, my friend, and really one of the
treasures of the Jewish people for her honesty and her
courage, and her writing talent explains why.

Naomi


=======================================
Naomi Ragen
Please visit my Web page at:
<blocked::http://www.naomiragen.com/>
http://www.NaomiRagen.com
and subscribe to my mailing list
by sending an empty email to:
naomiragen-on@mail-list.com
email:Naomi@NaomiRagen.com




_____



Column One: Ilan Halimi and Israel

_____

Caroline Glick, THE JERUSALEM POST Feb. 24, 2006
_____


Ilan Halimi's barbarous murder in France should awaken all
Jews to the most significant truth of our times: Today,
every Jew in the world is on the front lines of war.

As was the case 70 years ago, every Jew today is a target
for our enemies, who shout from every soapbox and prove at
every opportunity that their goal is the annihilation of the
Jewish people. From 1933-1945, the enemy was Nazi Germany.
Today, the enemy is political Islam. Its call for jihad
aimed at annihilating the Jews and dominating the world is
answered by millions of people throughout the world.

Among the lessons of the Holocaust, there is one that is
almost never mentioned. That lesson is that it is possible,
and indeed fairly easy to exterminate the Jews. The fact
that the Holocaust happened proves that it is absolutely
possible for the Jewish people to be wiped off the map -
just as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hamas
leader Khaled Mashal promise.

The story of Ilan Halimi's murder at the hands of a
terrorist gang of French Muslims brings to the surface the
various pathologies now converging to make the prospect of
annihilating all Jews seem possible to our enemies. First,
there are the murderers who took such apparent pleasure and
felt such pride in the fact that for 20 days they tortured
their Jewish hostage to death.

This makes sense. Anti-Semitism in the Muslim dominated
suburbs of Paris and other French cities is
all-encompassing. As Nidra Poller related in Thursday's Wall
Street Journal, "One of the most troubling aspects of this
affair is the probable involvement of relatives and
neighbors, beyond the immediate circle of the gang [of
kidnappers], who were told about the Jewish hostage and
dropped in to participate in the torture."

It appears that Ilan Halimi's murderers had some connection
to Hamas. Tuesday, French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy
said that police found propaganda published by the
Palestinian Charity Committee or the CBSP at the home of one
of the suspects. The European Jewish Press reported this
week that Israel has alleged that the organization is a
front group for Palestinian terrorists and that in August
2003 the US government froze the organization's US bank
accounts, accusing it of links with Hamas.

Halimi's family alleges that throughout the 20 days of
Ilan's captivity, the French police refused to take the
anti-Semitic motivations of the kidnappers into account. The
investigators insisted on viewing his kidnap as a garden
variety kidnap-for-ransom criminal case, which they said
generally involves no threat to the life of the captive. The
police maintained their refusal to investigate the
anti-Semitic motivations of the kidnappers in spite of the
fact that in their e-mail and telephone communications with
Ilan's family, his captors repeatedly referred to his
Judaism, and on at least one occasion recited verses from
the Koran while Ilan was heard screaming in agony in the
background. The family alleges that if the police had been
willing to acknowledge that Ilan was abducted because he was
Jewish, they would have recognized that his life was in
clear and immediate danger and acted with greater urgency.

Like the police, the French government waited an entire week
after Ilan was found naked, with cuts and burns over 80
percent of his body by a train station in suburban Paris,
before acknowledging the anti-Semitic nature of the crime.
According to the press reports, the French government was at
least partially motivated to suppress the issue of
anti-Semitism by its fear of inflaming the passions of the
French Muslims who make up between 10 to 13 percent of the
French population and comprise a quarter of the population
under 25 years old. And yet, now that the French government
has acknowledged that the crime was motivated by hatred of
Jews, it is behaving responsibly in pursuing the murderers
and decrying the attack on French Jewry.

In addition to the exterminationist anti-Semitism of Ilan's
murderers and the unwillingness of the French authorities to
acknowledge the anti-Semitic nature of the crime until it
was too late, there is one more aspect of the case that
bears note. That is Israel's reaction to the atrocity. In
short, there has been absolutely no official Israeli
reaction to the abduction, torture and murder of a Jew in
France by a predominantly Muslim terrorist gang that
kidnapped, tortured and murdered him because he was a Jew.

No Israeli government minister, official or spokesman has
condemned his murder. No Israeli official has demanded that
the French authorities investigate why the police refused to
take anti-Semitism into account during Ilan's captivity. No
Israeli official flew to Paris to participate in Ilan's
funeral or any other memorial or demonstration in his
memory. The Foreign Ministry's Web site makes no mention of
his murder. The Israeli Embassy in Paris - which has been
without an ambassador for the past several months - only
publicly expressed its condolences to the Halimi family on
February 23, 10 days after Ilan was found. This, when the
French Jewish community considers Halimi's murder to have
been the greatest calamity to have befallen it in recent
years; when aliya rates from France rose 25% last year; and
when Ilan's mother has told reporters that her son had
planned to make aliya soon and was just staying in France to
save money to finance his move to Israel. For its part, as
Michelle Mazel pointed out in The Jerusalem Post Thursday,
the French press has noted that the Israeli media has not
given the story prominent coverage. Halimi's murder has not
appeared on the front pages of the papers or at the top of
the television or radio broadcasts.

Although appalling, the absence of an official Israeli
outcry against Halimi's murder is not the least surprising.
Today, the unelected Kadima interim government, like the
Israeli media, is doing everything in its power to lull the
Israeli people into complacency towards the storm of war
raging around us. Against the daily barrages of Kassam
rockets on southern Israel; nervous reports of al-Qaida
setting up shop in Judea, Samaria and Gaza; the ascension of
Hamas to power in the Palestinian Authority; and Iran's
threats of nuclear annihilation, Israel's citizenry, under
the spell of Kadima and the media, appears intent on
ignoring the dangers and pretending that what happens to
Jews in France has nothing to do with us.

Israel's societal meekness accords well with Kadima's
ideology. Its creed was best expressed by Foreign Minister,
Justice Minister and Immigration Minister Tzipi Livni last
month at the Herzliya Conference and is best characterized
as "conditional Zionism." In her speech, Livni explained
that Israel's international legitimacy is conditional.
Unless a Palestinian state is established in Judea, Samaria
and Gaza, she warned, Israel will lose its legitimacy as a
Jewish state.

So for Livni, Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Shimon
Peres and the rest of the Kadima gang, unlike every other
people in the world, the Jewish people does not have an
inherent, natural right to exist as a free, sovereign and
independent people in its homeland. For Kadima, the Jewish
people's right to self-determination in our land is
conditional on our enemies' acceptance of our right to be
here.

Kadima's conditional Zionism finds expression in its
policies in Judea and Samaria. There, the gist of the
government's actions is that the only people with inherent
human rights in Judea and Samaria are the Arabs.

Throughout the areas, the government, backed by the
post-Zionist courts, prohibits Jews from building on land
that Jews own. Today, as Moshe Rosenbaum, the mayor of Beit
El explains, even receiving a permit to build an extension
on a standing house or additional classrooms in a school is
all but impossible.

While Olmert and Internal Security Minister Gideon Ezra have
repeatedly condemned Jews for allegedly cutting down trees
owned by Arabs in Judea and Samaria, the government has said
nothing and done nothing to stop the wholesale destruction
of Jewish orchards and national forests in the areas by
Palestinians. Over the past several months, in the vicinity
of Gush Etzion alone, thousands of Jewish-owned trees have
been chopped down by Arab vandals. Two national forests have
been laid to waste. Busy directing their energies and
attentions at delegitimizing the Israelis who live in Judea
and Samaria, the government has ignored Israel's enemies.

And so, as Kassam attacks against Israel multiply by the day
and Hamas leaders hold Jew-hating love-fests with
Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Khamenaei in Teheran, Olmert
assured us Wednesday that Hamas is not a strategic threat to
Israel.

When the Israeli government itself is claiming Jewish rights
are not inherent but rather defined and granted by others,
it can surprise no one the government has ignored Halimi's
murder.

Luckily for both Israel and the Jews around the world, the
current leadership is not our only option. We have other
leaders, the most prominent among them being Likud Chairman
Binyamin Netanyahu and former IDF chief of General Staff
Lt.-Gen. (res.) Moshe Ya'alon. Both of these men understand
well that the two most important lessons for the Jews from
the Holocaust are that we must never grant anyone else the
authority, legitimacy or power to define who we are or what
our rights are, and we are all responsible for one another.

On Tuesday, Ya'alon, who is currently based at the
Washington Institute for Near East Policy, came to Jerusalem
for the day to speak at a conference on the strategic
implications of Hamas's takeover of the Palestinian
Authority. There Ya'alon explained what he considers to be
the key to Israel's security. Israel, he said, has the
military capability to defeat its enemies. But for Israel to
be able to take the steps it needs to take to win the war
being waged for our destruction, first we need to accept the
fact that we have an intrinsic, unconditional right to our
land and our sovereignty. Once we understand that our rights
our unconditional, we will understand that we have an
obligation to wage war against those who work for our
destruction. That is, Ya'alon explained that for Israel to
survive, we need to return to our unconditional Zionism.

Sir Martin Gilbert, perhaps the preeminent British historian
of World War II, has said, "The interesting thing about
history is that it always repeats itself."

As was the case in World War II, today the Jewish people in
Israel and throughout the world is being targeted for
annihilation by an enemy bent on world domination. Ilan
Halimi's monstrous murder is just the latest sign of this
disturbing reality. Today, as 70 years ago, the Jews are
disserved by poor and weak leaders who refuse to see the
dangers.

But if we learn from history and we assess our options, we
will see that history needn't repeat itself. It is within
our power to reverse the course of our all too repetitious
past.

_________________
"The conversion of the entire population to Islam and the extinction of every form of dissent is the ideal of the Muslim State - This is Islamic Peace"

A moderate Moslem is one who sends others blow themselves up.

France arrests gang suspected in killing of Parisian Jew

From JDL

By Assaf Uni, Haaretz Correspondent| PARIS - The French police arrested late Thursday night most of the members of the gang that abducted, tortured and murdered Ilan Halimi, a 23- year-old Jew from Paris. Hundreds of SWAT officers raided apartments in Bagneux and arrested 12 people. Another suspect was arrested in Belgium. "They acted with indescribable cruelty," the judiciary police chief leading the investigation said. "They kept him naked and tied up for weeks. They cut him and in the end poured flammable liquid on him and set him alight."

While the citizens of France were shocked by the unbridled violence of the gang, Halimi's family claims that the murder was motivated by anti-Semitism.

"We think there is anti-Semitism in this affair," Rafi Halimi, Ilan's uncle, told the press.

"First, because the killers tried to kidnap at least two other Jews, and second, because of what they said on the phone," Rafi Halimi added. "When we said we didn't have 500,000 euros to give them they told us to go to the synagogue and get it," Rafi said. "They also recited verses from the Koran."

But the Paris public prosecutor, Jean-Claude Marin, told Parisian Jewish radio on Thursday that "no element of the current investigation could link this murder to an anti-Semitic declaration or action." The umbrella group of French Jewish secular organizations, CRIF, issued a statement Friday calling on the Jewish community "to keep calm, cautious and wait for developments in the investigation."

Ilan Halimi's family points to the behavior of the kidnappers in their ransom negotiations, which began a few days after Ilan disappeared. Halimi was abducted on January 21 after a woman came into the mobile phone store where he worked and charmed him into a dinner date. The woman had been sent by the gang, which calls itself "The Barbarians." A police source said the gang is a group of childhood friends who grew up in Bagneux, a suburb south of Paris. The gang includes Muslims of North African descent and is headed by Youssef Fofana, who has escaped police capture so far. According to Marin, the gang had made six similar abduction attempts in the past.

After overpowering Halimi, the gang brought him to an apartment in a high-rise in Bagneux. They contacted Halimi's family and over the next three weeks demanded ransoms ranging from 300,000 to 500,000 euros. According to reports, at one point they agreed upon a deal and set a meeting place but the kidnappers backed out and eventually ended contact.

A source in the Jewish community said the gang's behavior suggested that the motive behind the kidnapping was violence for its own sake, particularly against Jews.

"Why didn't they release him when the realized the family couldn't pay ransom?" asked Sami Gazlan, who is responsible for security in the Jewish community.

Last Monday, a few days after the kidnappers ended contact with the family, Ilan was found near a suburban train station south of Paris, naked, handcuffed and gagged, with burns covering 80 percent of his body. He died on the way to the hospital.

The first break in the case came on Thursday after the police released an Identikit image of the woman suspected of "baiting" Halimi. The woman turned herself in out of fears that neighbors would identify her, and identified the apartment where Halimi had been kept.

The store where Halimi had worked was closed Saturday. Several shops in the area, the 11th arondissement, were closed on Friday, with signs explaining that it was a gesture of sympathy for Halimi's family. Many of the shopkeepers were among the 1,000 or so people who attended Ilan Halimi's funeral in the Pantin cemetery.

Dozens of family members returned home, in the 12th arondissement, to begin sitting shiva after the funeral. Walking back, accompanied by police officers, relatives expressed their shock at the murder.

"We are in total shock," a close friend of Ilan's said Saturday. "All of us, Ilan's mother especially, have not yet begun to comprehend what happened."

_________________
"The conversion of the entire population to Islam and the extinction of every form of dissent is the ideal of the Muslim State - This is Islamic Peace"

A moderate Moslem is one who sends others blow themselves up.

Needing to wake up, West just closes its eyes

February 26, 2006

BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST





In five years' time, how many Jews will be living in France? Two years ago, a 23-year-old Paris disc jockey called Sebastien Selam was heading off to work from his parents' apartment when he was jumped in the parking garage by his Muslim neighbor Adel. Selam's throat was slit twice, to the point of near-decapitation; his face was ripped off with a fork; and his eyes were gouged out. Adel climbed the stairs of the apartment house dripping blood and yelling, "I have killed my Jew. I will go to heaven."



Is that an gripping story? You'd think so. Particularly when, in the same city, on the same night, a Jewish woman was brutally murdered in the presence of her daughter by another Muslim. You've got the making of a mini-trend there, and the media love trends.

Yet no major French newspaper carried the story.

This month, there was another murder. Ilan Halimi, also 23, also Jewish, was found by a railway track outside Paris with burns and knife wounds all over his body. He died en route to the hospital, having been held prisoner, hooded and naked, and brutally tortured for almost three weeks by a gang that had demanded half a million dollars from his family. Can you take a wild guess at the particular identity of the gang? During the ransom phone calls, his uncle reported that they were made to listen to Ilan's screams as he was being burned while his torturers read out verses from the Quran.

This time around, the French media did carry the story, yet every public official insisted there was no anti-Jewish element. Just one of those things. Coulda happened to anyone. And, if the gang did seem inordinately fixated on, ah, Jews, it was just because, as one police detective put it, ''Jews equal money.'' In London, the Observer couldn't even bring itself to pursue that particular angle. Its report of the murder managed to avoid any mention of the unfortunate Halimi's, um, Jewishness. Another British paper, the Independent, did dwell on the particular, er, identity groups involved in the incident but only in the context of a protest march by Parisian Jews marred by ''radical young Jewish men'' who'd attacked an ''Arab-run grocery.''

At one level, those spokesmonsieurs are right: It could happen to anyone. Even in the most civilized societies, there are depraved monsters who do terrible things. When they do, they rip apart entire families, like the Halimis and Selams. But what inflicts the real lasting damage on society as a whole is the silence and evasions of the state and the media and the broader culture.

A lot of folks are, to put it at its mildest, indifferent to Jews. In 2003, a survey by the European Commission found that 59 percent of Europeans regard Israel as the "greatest menace to world peace." Only 59 percent? What the hell's wrong with the rest of 'em? Well, don't worry: In Germany, it was 65 percent; Austria, 69 percent; the Netherlands, 74 percent. Since then, Iran has sportingly offered to solve the problem of the Israeli threat to world peace by wiping the Zionist Entity off the face of the map. But what a tragedy that those peace-loving Iranians have been provoked into launching nuclear armageddon by those pushy Jews. As Paul Oestreicher, Anglican chaplain of the University of Sussex, wrote in the Guardian the other day, "I cannot listen calmly when an Iranian president talks of wiping out Israel. Jewish fears go deep. They are not irrational. But I cannot listen calmly either when a great many citizens of Israel think and speak of Palestinians in the way a great many Germans thought and spoke about Jews when I was one of them and had to flee."

It's not surprising when you're as heavily invested as the European establishment is in an absurd equivalence between a nuclear madman who thinks he's the warm-up act for the Twelfth Imam and the fellows building the Israeli security fence that you lose all sense of proportion when it comes to your own backyard, too. "Radical young Jewish men" are no threat to "Arab-run groceries." But radical young Muslim men are changing the realities of daily life for Jews and gays and women in Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Oslo and beyond. If you don't care for the Yids, big deal; look out for yourself. The Jews are playing their traditional role of the canaries in history's coal mine.

Something very remarkable is happening around the globe and, if you want the short version, a Muslim demonstrator in Toronto the other day put it very well:

''We won't stop the protests until the world obeys Islamic law.''

Stated that baldly it sounds ridiculous. But, simply as a matter of fact, every year more and more of the world lives under Islamic law: Pakistan adopted Islamic law in 1977, Iran in 1979, Sudan in 1984. Four decades ago, Nigeria lived under English common law; now, half of it's in the grip of sharia, and the other half's feeling the squeeze, as the death toll from the cartoon jihad indicates. But just as telling is how swiftly the developed world has internalized an essentially Islamic perspective. In their pitiful coverage of the low-level intifada that's been going on in France for five years, the European press has been barely any less loopy than the Middle Eastern media.

What, in the end, are all these supposedly unconnected matters from Danish cartoons to the murder of a Dutch filmmaker to gender-segregated swimming sessions in French municipal pools about? Answer: sovereignty. Islam claims universal jurisdiction and always has. The only difference is that they're now acting upon it. The signature act of the new age was the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran: Even hostile states generally respect the convention that diplomatic missions are the sovereign territory of their respective countries. Tehran then advanced to claiming jurisdiction over the citizens of sovereign states and killing them -- as it did to Salman Rushdie's translators and publishers. Now in the cartoon jihad and other episodes, the restraints of Islamic law are being extended piecemeal to the advanced world, by intimidation and violence but also by the usual cooing promotion of a spurious multicultural "respect" by Bill Clinton, the United Church of Canada, European foreign ministers, etc.

The I'd-like-to-teach-the-world-to-sing-in-perfect-harmonee crowd have always spoken favorably of one-worldism. From the op-ed pages of Jutland newspapers to les banlieues of Paris, the Pan-Islamists are getting on with it.

© Mark Steyn 2006


_________________
"The conversion of the entire population to Islam and the extinction of every form of dissent is the ideal of the Muslim State - This is Islamic Peace"

A moderate Moslem is one who sends others blow themselves up.

Gang Leader Confesses to Grisly Murder of French Jew

ABIDJAN -- A Paris gang leader was arrested overnight in Abidjan and has confessed to the kidnap, torture and murder of a young French Jewish man, Ivorian investigators said on Thursday, in a case that has horrified France.

Youssouf Fofana, 25, who fled to Ivory Coast shortly after the dying Ilan Hamili was found on February 11, could be extradited back to France by the end of the day, according to French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin.

"He has French nationality. He has been arrested by the Ivorian police. [French] police investigators are on the scene, so we believe he could be repatriated to France in the coming hours," Villepin told Canal Plus television, referring to Fofana. "This is an odious crime, and it is therefore important that justice be rapidly carried out," he said.

However, Abidjan state prosecutor Raymond Tchimou was quoted by the French daily Le Monde as saying that the process could take longer.

"Extradition can be a drawn-out process. We need to get all the documents together ... We will go as quickly as we can. He could be back in France by the end of the week," Tchimou was quoted as saying.

Ivorian police said that Fofana - a convicted petty criminal of Ivorian origin - had admitted taking part in Halimi's kidnap and murder. But they said that "he denies any anti-Semitic dimension" to the crime.

Halimi, a 23-year-old telephone salesman, went missing in late January after being lured into a trap by a woman. He was held and tortured for three weeks in a poor multi-ethnic suburb of Paris by a gang that sent ransom demands to his family.

Ten days ago he was dumped beside a railway line just south of Paris city center. Naked, bound and gagged, his body bore horrific injuries and he died on the way to hospital.

The crime struck horror in France's 500,000-strong Jewish community, where it was widely assumed that Halimi had been targeted because of his Jewishness.

After initial reluctance, the French authorities earlier this week said that they, too, believe that anti-Semitism was part of the gang's motives. On Tuesday the investigating magistrate heading the case opened the way for aggravated charges of racial hatred against gang members.

By Thursday a total of 13 people had been placed under judicial investigation in Paris, the latest being the concierge of the building in which Halimi was held.

In a growing climate of national outrage at the killing, President Jacques Chirac and Villepin were to attend a memorial service for Halimi later on Thursday at the capital's main synagogue. A silent demonstration through Paris city center is planned for Sunday.

Chirac telephoned Halimi's parents on Tuesday to promise them that "everything shall be done to make sure those responsible for this act of barbarity are traced, caught and punished".

Investigators believe that the gang had made several failed attempts to extort money.

According to interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy, four out of six previous targets were Jewish, who were chosen because of the belief that "Jews have money".

Press commentators on Thursday universally described the identification of Jews with money as an insidious and classic form of anti-Semitism.

"The whole nature of this affair - the combination of gangland criminality with exceptional sadism and a brute anti-Semitic instinct that equates Jews and money - gives it an extraordinary character that inspires both revulsion and dread," said the leftwing newspaper Liberation.

"Hatred of Jews has left the category of the unacceptable to become something normal - especially in the eyes of many young people," it said.

_________________
"The conversion of the entire population to Islam and the extinction of every form of dissent is the ideal of the Muslim State - This is Islamic Peace"

A moderate Moslem is one who sends others blow themselves up.

JDL Forces Investigation in France

THE CONTINENTAL DIVIDE: Beware Victimhood Becoming French Jewry's Identity
By Eric frey March 3, 2006
It was inspiring to see nearly 200,000 people out on the streets of Paris and other French cities last weekend, protesting the grisly torture and murder of a young Jewish man at the hands of a gang of mostly Muslim immigrants. The massive public outcry against antisemitism, led by some of France's leading politicians, echoed the famed 1990 march led by then-president François Mitterrand following the desecration of dozens of Jewish cemeteries in the country.

The message coming from last weekend's protest could not have been clearer: Once again, Jews in France — home to the world's third largest Jewish community — and across Europe are being threatened by religious hatred and by antisemitic violence.

The tragedy that befell Ilan Halimi — being left for dead, naked, handcuffed and covered with burns near railroad tracks south of Paris after being held captive for three weeks — should obviously worry his fellow French Jews. The reaction to the tragedy, however, is also cause for concern. In the days following Halimi's horrific murder, strong pressure by his grieving family and by French Jewish groups turned what was a monstrous criminal act into a symbol of modern-day antisemitism. This was, without a doubt, a mistake. Aberrant crimes never should be used to define relationships among ethnic groups, and most certainly never in shaping how a community views itself. The French police are still unsure to what extent Halimi's death was a consequence of antisemitism. The gang that killed him, the self-styled "Barbarians," was motivated by greed and not by racial hatred. Antisemitism may have played a role insofar as the kidnappers believed that Jews had money and that a rich Jewish community would help Halimi's family pay the ransom. But in previous attacks, the gang also has targeted non-Jews. Perhaps they treated Halimi particularly badly because of his religion, but perhaps it was only out of the frustration that his family was unable to come up with the ransom. Police investigators now believe that the gang was ready to release Halimi, but decided in the end to murder him after he accidentally glimpsed some of their faces. For Halimi's family, of course, these nuances do not matter. Understanding the exact circumstances of his death will not bring him back to life.

ut for the larger Jewish community, the circumstances surrounding the tragedy are of paramount importance. The question is not just whether the Halimi murder is evidence of growing antisemitism in France, but whether it is also an omen of worse things to come — just as far-right death squads targeting prominent Jews in the Weimar Republic foreshadowed the gas chambers of Auschwitz. The shadow of the Holocaust was certainly present during last weekend's march. And it was present in the words of Roger Cukierman, chairman of CRIF, the chief representative body of French Jewry: "It is important for French society to recognize," he told a local radio station, "that small racist and antisemitic prejudices can have terrible and dreadful consequences." After worrying mostly about skinheads and neo-Nazi groups in the early 1990s, Jewish groups have mostly turned their attention to the "new antisemitism" driven by the rise of radical Islam, Muslim rage against Israel and growing anti-Zionism of the left. The outbreak of the second intifada in 2000 sparked an increase in anti-Jewish violence — particularly in France — that reached its peak in 2004. That certainly has made French Jews feel less secure than they did a few years ago, and among the young there is growing talk of leaving. But as the recent street riots in the suburbs of Paris showed, most of the anger of young Muslims is not directed at Jews per se. Radical Muslims are not about to take control of state power and turn its instruments against the Jews. And whatever antisemitic prejudices the kidnappers might hold, they are certainly not the spearhead of Islamic fundamentalism, and for that matter may not even have any links to other Muslim groups.

The initiative to turn the Halimi murder into a symbol of antisemitism came from the Jewish grass roots. Young hardline groups like Betar and the French chapter of Meir Kahane's Jewish Defense League blamed the authorities for ignoring the racist character of the crime, and in doing so pressured a hesitant CRIF to take up the cause.

Despite the national outpouring of solidarity, however, the hard-liners' success is a double-edged sword, because it has made French Jews feel even more isolated, embattled and persecuted. French society is rife with social and ethnic tensions, and French Jews are particularly affected: Many of them live next door to Muslim immigrants, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict fuels Muslim anger. But the amalgamation of these problems with the continent's history of persecution is misleading and detrimental to Jewish interests. Unlike those of the 1930s, today Europe's Jews do not live under any existential threat. Ilan Halimi's family deserves condolences, but his barbaric murder must not become a symbol of Jewish existence in today's Europe.

Eric Frey is managing editor of the Vienna daily Der Standard.


_________________
"The conversion of the entire population to Islam and the extinction of every form of dissent is the ideal of the Muslim State - This is Islamic Peace"

A moderate Moslem is one who sends others blow themselves up.

Ilan Halimi's mother speaks out

Mother of murdered French Jew
speaks out on what went wrong
By: Brett Kline www.jta.org <http://www.jta.org/>

PARIS, March 22 (JTA) - Ruth Halimi is afraid. Since her son
Ilan was tortured to death in February, she hasn't had a
moment's peace. Her life has been ravaged forever.


"It's a nightmare," she says. "Sometimes I think I'll wake
up and find it isn't so, but it is. Ilan is gone, and I must
keep on living. I must keep on living."


In her modest apartment, she receives journalists but
insists that they take no pictures of her.


"I don't want my face in the newspapers, on television or on
the Internet," she says. "I'm afraid there are more
barbarians out there and that they'll find me."


Ilan Halimi, 23, was left for dead in the train station of a
Paris suburb on Feb. 13 after being kidnapped and tortured
for three weeks by a gang demanding ransom. He died on the
way to the hospital.


More than 10 suspects have been arrested, including the
leader of the gang, Youssouf Fofana, who was extradited from
the Ivory Coast, where his parents were born.


Suspects told police that they tried to kidnap Jews because
"all Jews are rich," and that they put cigarettes out on the
victim's face because "he was Jewish and we don't like
Jews."


Halimi says something is wrong with the educational system
in France.


"France has produced monsters," she says, her face thin and
skin tight, fraught by nerves and pain. "It's not about
being Muslim, because all the gang members went to secular,
public schools. They have grown up with no feelings, like
mechanical monsters."


Most of the gang members were Muslim, of North African Arab
and black African origins, but others involved were not,
including the superintendent of the building where Halimi
was held.


"They promised him 1,500 euros, so he gave them an empty
apartment to use and said nothing," Halimi said of the
superintendent. "What kind of a man is that?"


She answers her own question: "It's a man who simply does
not care."


Many residents reportedly knew someone was being tortured in
the basement, but did not intervene or alert authorities.


"It was an open secret in the neighborhood that a Jew was
being held and tortured, and nobody called the police
anonymously, not one person," she says, shaking her head.
"The elevator was blocked for 10 days and people were
guarding the door to the apartment, and nobody called the
police. It was not that all those neighbors were
anti-Semitic. It's more that they simply did not care."


She doesn't find it difficult to believe that most French
people do not think this was an anti-Semitic crime.


"Everyone agrees that this is a sick crime," she says, "but
beyond that, most French people simply do not care, one way
or the other. That's the way they are."


Halimi has been very critical of the French police. She says
they broke the first rule in the book by telling her to
break off contact with the kidnappers.


"Everyone knows you maintain contact; otherwise, they become
enraged, and that is exactly what happened," she said. Even
Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy "told me that the police
had failed. He said, 'I am taking this personally because I
am the head of the police.' "


"I feel like the French police abandoned me," she adds. "I
think they wanted to catch the gang members, but they were
not thinking about Ilan. It was cold-blooded, with no
feeling, like they didn't care."


She is careful to say she has nothing against Muslims.


"I grew up with Muslims in Casablanca, in Morocco," she
says. "I never had any problems, never. The problem is with
France. I think the country has become sick from a lack of
feelings, a lack of emotion."


Halimi says she always has been a religious Jew.


"I have always prayed to God," she says. "I still pray every
day. This is what gets me through every day. Without my god,
I would have collapsed already. They took my baby boy."


She begins to cry. The tears flow. She does not try to stop
them. Her son-in-law Rafi is there. There are