Don't forget Ilan Halimi

Ilan Halimi (photo copied from Wikipedia, original source AFP)

I intended to write here my next Bulgaria-centric post but a discussion at Highlander's blog changed my intention. Her Nov. 3 post The Patriot and the Racist: a tale of two citizens begins like that, "Israel is an ally of the US and is rewarded handsomely for it. They are there holding the front in the Middle East against the barbarians (that would be the Arabs - for those who don't know their 101 of the Middle East)." (Those my readers who don't know Highlander - don't rush to judge her based on this single quote, it was quite unlike her.)

I commented, "The mention of "barbarians" is interesting. By the way this was how Ilan Halimi's murderers (who were Muslims but not Arabs) called themselves..."

French commenter Nomad replied, "I am surprised you call yourself a scientist, because of this very sentence I can just see how your an adept of the "vagueness". There were no avered "arabs" in the gang who killed Ilian Halimi, the murderer is Ivoirian, his complices are white young surburbans from different EU origins... The only allegated "muslin" is the ivoirian, who is not practicing his religion though. In his mind it's more racism anti-whites than anti-semit."

So this post was called into existence.

"Ilan Halimi (1982 - 2006) was a young French Jew kidnapped by a gang of Muslim immigrants called the "Barbarians" and subsequently tortured to death over a period of three weeks." This is the beginning of his article in English Wikipedia. It specifies below, "Implicated in the crime are the members of a youth gang calling themselves "les barbares" (the Barbarians), many of whom were Muslim. The people so far arrested are mostly unemployed children of immigrants from African countries."

The same source describes Ilan's fate as follows: "On 21 January, Halimi, aged 23, was lured by an attractive 17-year-old French-Iranian girl to an apartment block in the Parisian banlieues (suburbs). There Halimi was overwhelmed by a youth gang and kept prisoner for twenty-four days. During that time, his kidnappers tortured him by stabbing him with knives, burning his face and body with cigarattes and beating him in order to try to extract a ransom of initially EUR 450,000 from his family. He was also kept naked and tied up and at one time, his kidnappers poured flammable liquid on him and set him on fire. Reportedly, neighbors came by to watch and to even participate in the torture but no one called the authorities. On 13 February, Halimi was found naked, tied and handcuffed to a tree near a railroad track in the Parisian suburbs, with burns from acid covering 80% of his body..., with multiple stab wounds, as well as with one severed ear and toe. On the way to the hospital, he died from his wounds."

Let me comment the bit about the neighbours. I have spent all my life in apartment buildings. This sort of housing offers no privacy, let alone secrecy. If you play violin in your apartment, or if your child jumps around the way children do, neighbours come to complain. It is unthinkable that a person can be tortured to death in such a building without all inhabitants being aware. Each one of them could call the police from some pay phone and tell them what was happening without any risk to himself. Nobody did it. Some neighbours may have participated in the torture and some did not, but all of them wanted him tortured.

Let's look at the alleged kidnappers' list as given by Wikipedia. Youssouf Fofana, aged 25, the self-proclaimed "brain of the Barbarians", is regarded as Muslim even by Nomad. Indeed, she said he was non-practicing. I asked in reply, were Mohamed Atta & Co. practicing Islam while in the USA? In this context, "practicing" and "non-practicing" are terms of absolutely no importance.

The next gang member listed is "Christophe M-V aka "Moko", a 22-year-old French man". However, the corresponding French Wikipedia article gives an additional detail: "Christophe Martin-Vallet dit "Moko", martiniquais converti à l'islam". So those who make the effort to check French sources are rewarded with the information that the Barbarians' No. 2 was a convert to Islam. It is a strange coincidence that, disputing the term "racist", I had commented on the same Highlander's post, "I would also feel uncomfortable if flying with Arabs... It has nothing to do with racism. I would feel equally uncomfortable if I know that some of my white fellow passengers are converts to Islam. Because there have been many terrorist converts, regardless of their racial affiliation..."

The next person on the list is "Yalda, a seventeen-year-old French-Iranian girl who acted as a honeypot to lure Halimi into the gang's lair". It is well known which religion is dominant in Iran.

No. 4 in the list is "Samir" (Samir Aït Abdelmalek) - no details are given about his origin, the name sound like a Muslim one.

No. 5 is "Zigo" (Jean-Christophe G) - no details are given about his origin, the name doesn't sound like a Muslim one. Some Barbarians may have been non-Muslims. Would this change much? Non-Muslim useful idiots often assist Islamists in their crimes. A good example is the International Solidarity Movement.

No. 6 is "Giri", from the Comoros. Wikipedia says that this country "prior to 2002 was known officially as the Islamic Federal Republic of the Comoros", with as much as 98% of the population consisting of Sunni Muslims.

No. 7 is "Nabil", with Egyptian-French origins (remember Nomad's claim that not one of "the Barbarians" was Arab).

No. 8 is "Jérôme", a Portuguese. Perhaps he gave Nomad the excuse to call the gang members "white young surburbans from different EU origins", hardly an accurate description.

The Guardian, a source not known to have pro-Jewish and anti-Muslim bias, has published on Feb. 22, 2006 an article titled Brutal murder was anti-Semitic crime, says Sarkozy. It says, "The police, who found literature linking some of the suspects to Palestinian and Muslim groups, have insisted the murder was motivated by greed - the gang had demanded a ransom - and not religious motives. Mr Sarkozy told MPs: "The truth is that these crooks acted primarily for sordid and vile motives, to get money, but they were convinced that 'the Jews have money', and if those they kidnapped didn't have money, their family and their community would come up with it. That's called anti-Semitism by amalgam." He added that four of the six other people the gang had approached and tried to kidnap "were of the Jewish faith"... Police had earlier insisted the murder was not anti-Semitic, but the victim's mother Ruth Halimi accused them of ignoring this motive for fear of upsetting Muslim opinion."

Other, less politically correct sources paint even a bleaker picture. Media-Ratings reports in March 2006, "The media have been doing a lot of beating around the bush to avoid addressing the anti-Semitic nature of this crime. As soon as we found out that the victim of this crime was Jewish, that the gang’s other kidnapping attempts mainly targeted Jews, plus some additional facts Ilan Halimi’s family had revealed, there could be no doubt about its anti-Semitic motive. Yet the press held out until, first, the Israeli daily Haaretz published an interview of Mrs Halimi on February 20 2006, to the dismay of the French Foreign Office".

A Feb. 23, 2006 post by Tom Gross says, "Rafi Halimi, Ilan’s uncle, told the media that “when we said we didn’t have 500,000 euros to give them they told us to go to the synagogue and get it.” “The gang phoned the family on several occasions and made them listen to the recitation of verses from the Koran, while Ilan’s tortured screams could be heard in the background.” The police found literature linking the suspects to extremist Muslim causes and also discovered that the gang had already tried to kidnap four other Jews in recent weeks. Yet, last week the Paris public prosecutor, Jean-Claude Marin, told French journalists that “no element of the current investigation could link this murder to an anti-Semitic declaration or action”. Following an outcry late last week by French Jews, the police have now admitted that there was an anti-Semitic component to this torture and murder... For days last week, when reports of the kidnapping and murder of Ilan Hariri were published in Le Figaro, Libération and Le Monde, there was no mention of the racist aspect of this crime. Only French Jewish media mentioned it.Following protests, French newspapers have now said that this was an anti-Semitic crime... In London, The Observer, the Sunday affiliate newspaper of The Guardian, in its report on the kidnapping and murder also failed to mention that the victim was Jewish. It is very unlikely that The Guardian of The Observer would report on an almost certain racial attack on a black or Asian Muslim without mentioning that it was a racial attack, or who the perpetrators and victim were."

Gross also cites a Wall Street Journal article reminding an earlier murder: "The murder of Ilan Halimi invites comparison with the November 2003 killing of a Jewish disc jockey, Sébastien Selam. His Muslim neighbor, Adel, slit his throat, nearly decapitating him, and gouged out his eyes with a carving fork in his building’s underground parking garage. Adel came upstairs with bloodied hands and told his mother, ‘I killed my Jew, I will go to paradise." In the two years before his murder, the Selam family was repeatedly harassed for being Jewish. The murderer, who admits his guilt, was placed in a psychiatric hospital, and may be released soon. The initial response to the kidnapping of Ilan Halimi suggested a comparably selective ignorance."

Some months ago, a Libyan-American Islamist wrote in his blog (now deleted) a post about a young Muslim mother who was attacked by four or more young men in Glasgow and had to run away with her baby, leaving the pram behind (the case is described e.g. here).

If that blogger wanted to be more balanced in his reports about racially/religiously motivated crimes in Glasgow, he could also mention 15-year-old Kriss Donald, who in 2004 was abducted by men of Pakistani origin, stabbed 13 times, doused in petrol, set on fire and left to die. But this is another matter.

In his post, the Libyan-American said that the media reports didn't mention the religion of the attackers and that if Muslims were doing a crime, their religion would be mentioned. Highlander agreed with this in a comment. I disagreed and cited the 2005 Washington Times article about the Paris arsonists Rioters are Muslims, but don't say it.

Indeed, mainstreem media and politicians do all they can to cover up the hate crimes committed by Islamists. They prevented the murders of Kriss Donald and Sebastien Selam from receiving wide publicity, they tried to do the same with the murder of Ilan Halimi, they still manage to do it with the systematic gang-rapes of native European and other non-Muslim women by Muslims.

The question is, why do ordinary native Europeans like Nomad embrace this pernicious policy even in circumstances when they have no reason to fear for their own safety? One reason is the multi-culti charlatanism postulating that non-Westerners cannot do bad things. Another reason is the psychological phenomenon known as wishful thinking. With so many Muslim immigrants already in Europe and not intending to go anywhere, and becoming more numerous every year, it is so tempting to regard them as no worse than any other group of people. So Westerners prefer not to see the unpleasant truth, not to hear it and, above all, not to speak about it.

But the memory of the victims and the future of our children requires us to open our eyes and mouths. Because if we do not speak, who will?