#ilanhalimi

OTD  2006, a 23-year-old French-Moroccan Jew by the name of Ilan Halimi was brutally murdered for simply being Jewish. 

ה׳ יקום דמו 🕯️

His killers, a gang that went by the name of Les Barbares or “the Barbarians”, kidnapped Halimi, held him hostage for 24 days before burning him alive and dumping his body near a train station in the Paris suburb of Saint-Genevieve-de-Bois. Halimi was found alive by a local, still fighting for his life, with 80 percent of his body deformed and disfigured by acid burns, an ear and toe cut off and his genitals mutilated. He died on his way to the hospital. 

During the investigation, key members of the group confessed that they believed that all Jews are rich, which motivated them to target Halimi, although he came from the same lower-class, Parisian suburb as the abductors did. The abductors also threatened the Halimi family to send money from the “Jewish community” and “rabbis” if they could not afford the 450,000 euro ransom. 

This instance of the re-emergence of old antisemitic canards associating Jews with money and power demonstrates the lethality of bigotry towards Jews. 

The aftermath of the Ilan Halimi case unfortunately only gained French national attention. Reactions from the global community were scarce, with only the United States Helsinki Commission holding a briefing recognizing the omnipresence of antisemitism in the modern world. 

While all those directly implicated in the abduction of Halimi were sentenced to heavy dues for their crimes, a Halimi relative quotes, “The important thing for me is not handing out heavier jail terms, honestly. The important thing is to open this to the press and public and make it a learning experience”. Unfortunately, when the world sits silently as Jews are murdered overtly, clearly the world holdsno intention for a lesson to be learned.

The cases of the murder of Mireille Knoll, Sarah Halimi (no relation) and others that followed Ilan Halimi’s serve to prove that lethal antisemitism is very much alive in France today.