I am a big fan of horror movies, and have been since I was about six years old. But the most frightening movie I ever saw had nary a werewolf, or vampire, or ghost hovering about. It was Naming the Names, in which a young women involved in the Irish Republican Army lures her lover, the son of an English judge, to his death. This vision of fanaticism, bordering on, if not over the line of, psychosis, was so chilling it raises the hair on the back of my neck just to think about it.
I thought about it again when I noticed the story of Ilan Halimi, whose death is all over the blogosphere, but has been on the back burner of the world press. Halimi, a French Jew, who sold mobil phones from a shop in Northeast Paris, was lured from his shop on January 21st by an attractive women. He was kidnapped, tortured for three weeks, and then murdered. Think about what you were doing for those three weeks, while Ilan suffered. From the Washington Post:
One day last month, a young woman entered the Paris mobile phone shop where Ilan Halimi worked. She had no interest in a new phone, according to Paris police. She wanted to flirt with the 23-year-old salesman. She left the shop with Halimi's cell phone number, and soon after, the two arranged a date.
Last week, French police found Halimi -- the son of Jewish Moroccan immigrants -- near a railroad track in a southern Parisian suburb. His naked body was covered with cigarette burns and he was handcuffed. He died in an ambulance on the way to the hospital.
The WaPo article is entitled "French Suspect Anti-Semitism." No! Ya think? Halimi was murdered by a group calling themselves "the gang of barbarians." Well, I suppose you have to mark that down as a bit of honesty. But its clear that barbarians in this case were motivated by Muslim ideology. Again from the WaPo:
French police initially described the brutal kidnapping and killing as a crime-for-cash perpetrated by a gang calling itself "The Barbarians." It routinely used young women to lure unsuspecting victims.
But in ensuing days, family members, Jewish organizations and a French magistrate labeled the killing a hate crime, directed against Halimi because of his religion. Many have cited the torture and reports that the gang's suspected leader was later arrested in a Muslim neighborhood in Ivory Coast, in West Africa.
It wasn't the first such crime, though it has taken the French police some time to face the facts. Mark Steyn reports:
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.
Houston, we have a problem. A considerable minority of Muslim immigrants in Western nations are prone to actions that would have made Hitler smile. I don't know quite what to do about this. But surely the first step is to recognize what is happening. Apparently France is waking up. Belatedly. 33,000 Parisans came into the streets today to demonstrate against anti-Semitism. Powerline has the story:
Its one thing when Danish cartoonists have to hide. Its another when merely being a Jew is a death sentence.
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