Bloodthirsty Liberal

Steyn Time

I’ve promised you not to quote every word Mark Steyn says or writes (you can do that yourself here), but you must read every word of this:

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.”

As always, Steyn generalizes from the particular to make some very telling points about the threat of radical Islam and the rest of the world’s supine response.

As well as being horrified, I’ve been puzzled by the Ilan Halimi story. Why has he not become the French Emmett Till or Medgar Evers? Was the American response to murderous racism that all blacks should move to Liberia? Chirac’s attendance at the memorial service notwithstanding, why is the French response to murderous racism and a mass exodus of Jews to Israel a Gallic shrug?

Or am I wrong?

Tens of thousands expected in Paris march protesting Halimi murder
By News Agencies

The family of Ilan Halimi, who was kidnapped, tortured and killed in an attack that appears to have been motivated in part by anti-Semitism, will not attend the demonstration against racism and anti-Semitism that is scheduled to take place in Paris on Sunday in response to the murder, but will hope for its success, the family’s attorneys said Saturday.

The rally - which is due to be attended by over 100,000 people and numerous public figures, including government ministers - has become controversial due to the planned participation of representatives of two right-wing political movements, the National Front and the Movement for France (known by its French initials MPF).