Author: Alyssa A. Lappen
Publication: FrontPageMagazine.com
Date: December 4, 2003
URL: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=11062
After a European Union poll found
that nearly 60% of Europeans consider Israel the greatest threat to world
peace, the British Broadcasting Corp. on November 26, asked if anti-Semitism
is really increasing. "There was outrage and shock over the recent EU poll,"
observed Robert Wistrich, director of Jerusalem's Vidal Sassoon International
Center for the Study of anti-Semitism. Many Israelis consider mainstream
labeling of "Israel as a Nazi state" a sort of anti-Semitism.
But the BBC gave the final word
to Vienna's Edward Serotta. The increasingly "shrill" debate often "paints
the entire European continent as a cesspool of hatred for Jews," griped
the Central Europe Center for Research and Documentation director. "One
prominent Jewish leader recently said the climate was just like 1933 -
this is absolutely absurd."
Oh really? Serotta made this bizarre
claim precisely a week after two Paris Jews were brutally murdered and
disfigured-because they were Jewish. A minor tabloid, Le Parisien, reported
the grisly events. But not a single major French newspaper-Le Monde, Figaro
or Libération-covered the stories, according to an interview with
a victim's mother, distributed by Rosenpress in Revue-Politique.com. In
one case, the police advised the family not to call the crime anti-Semitic.
[1]
Sebastian Sellam, 23, was a popular
disc jockey at a hot Parisian night club called Queen. At about 11:45 p.m.
on Wednesday November 19, the young man known as DJ Lam C (a reverse play
on his surname) left the apartment he shared with his parents in a modest
building in of Paris' 10th arrondissement near la Place Colonel Fabien,
heading to work as usual. In the underground parking lot, a Muslim neighbor
slit Sellam's throat twice, according to the Rosenpress interview. His
face was completely mutilated with a fork. Even his eyes were gouged out.
Following the crime, Rosenpress
correspondent Alain Azria reported, Sellam's mother said the Muslim perpetrator
mounted the stairs, his hands still bloody, and announced his crime. "I
have killed my Jew. I will go to heaven," he reportedly said. The alleged
murderer's family was well known for rabid anti-Semitism, Mrs. Sellam reportedly
told Rosenpress, a point confirmed by the victim's brother. Within the
previous year, Sellam's mother reportedly said, the family found a dead
rooster outside their apartment door with its throat slit, and their Mezuzah
was ripped from their door post. Leaving dead roosters is reportedly a
traditional warning of impending murder.
The homicide especially traumatized
the Paris Jewish community: According to Rosenpress, another gruesome murder,
also allegedly committed by a Muslim, occurred earlier that evening. Chantal
Piekolek, 53, was working in her Avenue de Clichy shoe store when Mohamed
Ghrib, 37, stabbed her 27 times in the neck and chest.
Piekolek's 10-year-old daughter
hid in the storeroom behind the shop with a girlfriend and heard the entire
crime. There was no evidence of sexual assault, according to Rosenpress.
Paris reporters believe the cash remained in the shop's register, but this
detail remained unconfirmed at press time.
A report apparently based on Le
Parisien story, also appeared in France's biggest Jewish newspaper, Actualité
Juive, but added little. The report strangely named the DJ's alleged murderer
only by his first name. No surname was given. A reliable Paris journalist
says the story is correct.
Initial reports in small news outlets
naturally terrified and confused the French Jewish community. Intense anti-Semitism
has been building for more than a decade, according to Nidra Poller, an
American expatriate in Paris for several decades. Anti-Semitic crimes frequently
go unreported in the major press, she said, suppressed by French authorities,
victims fearing retribution-and news agencies. Jewish community members
thus usually learn of attacks as they did during previous centuries in
North African and Eastern European ghettoes-by word of mouth.
In 2001, a rabbi in Poller's neighborhood
was kidnapped and held hostage in a car for two hours. Another religious
Jew was kidnapped in similar fashion, Poller reported. A Jewish woman and
her husband, whom she had just picked up at a local hospital, were abused
and threatened with murder for several hours by their Muslim taxi driver,
she said.
The charged, anti-Semitic atmosphere
in France engenders panic each time a Jewish community member suffers an
attack. Crimes typically include harassment, kidnapping, assault, rock-throwing,
arson and other abuse, Poller said. Victims usually report the incidents
to officials, families and friends. Stories thus spread like wildfire,
terrifying people, she noted. Just as frequently, authorities refuse to
investigate. Reports are then followed by official and other denials-stoking
the community's fear. People don't know what to believe, Poller said. Desperate
for verifiable data, they attempt to trace reports through sources back
to the victims. But those seeking information are generally told to back
off. "They are left wondering whether their sources are correcting wild
rumors or covering up dastardly anti-Semitism," said Poller.
French Jews live in constant fear,
Poller said. Everyday activities, such as taking a taxi, going to synagogue
or shopping can bring attacks. The entire community is traumatized. This
pattern was effectively repeated with the November murders in Paris after
initial reports indicated that both cases were anti-Semitic crimes.
Then the respected Guysen Israel
News clarified essential details. It seemed, the news service claimed,
that Piekolek was not Jewish, although her husband was. In a subsequent
editorial, Guysen opined that while Sellam's murderer was a known anti-
Semite, he was also mad and jealous of the successful DJ he had known since
boyhood. The news agency insists that it would label the crimes anti-Semitic
if they really were. But other reporters and agencies disagree, and label
the murders anti-Semitic.
Parisian Jews are frightened and
confused, Poller said. If Sellam's murderer was mad, why wasn't he previously
committed to psychiatric confinement? Were initial Rosenpress and Revue-Politique
reports on Piekolek correct? Was her murder verifiably not an anti-Semitic
crime? Or are subsequent denials based on terrified rejection of facts?
(Her husband was Jewish, so it was not "anti-Semitic.") Are Paris Muslims
really starting to slaughter Jews?
"In Paris, a lot of Jews already
had to leave countries in North Africa," Poller said. "Now, they are told
not to talk about anti-Semitism. And they are going to have to flee again."
Alas, it is easy to believe the
worst. A few days earlier, an anti-Semitic arson attack hit the Jewish
Merkatz Hatorah boys' school on the outskirts of Paris. Prime-Minister
Jean- Pierre Raffarin later said he hoped to identify "those who carried
out this shameful attack."
Given intense and worsening anti-Semitism
in France and Europe, there seems little hope that the government will
actually investigate the arson, much less prosecute the perpetrator if
it finds one. After all, EU officials deny the severity of the problem.
Last week, they shelved an EU report on the subject for fear of antagonizing
Muslims, who were behind many of the incidents examined.
Two Muslim students at Paris' well-regarded
Lycée Montaigne recently beat an 11- year-old Jewish classmate while
reportedly yelling at him, "We'll finish Hitler's job." Headmaster Jean-Marie
Renault sued the accused aggressors and plans "a debate on the dangers
of xenophobia" next term. Complaints rarely produce criminal sanctions,
however. Many anti-Semitic crimes are never even reported, Poller said-especially
in the housing project cités that ring Paris, where residents are
one third North African Muslims. "La Zone is foreign country," writes Theodore
Dalrymple.
But is it? Poller left France for
a U.S. speaking tour in November with one week's news publications to read
on her flight-two weekly magazines and three major newspapers. All of them,
she said, were "reeking with hatred [for Jews]." They also sympathized
extensively with terrorists. News reports are not factual. "They are sermons,"
Poller said. A profile of philosopher Gilles Deleuze in the weekly Nouvel
Observateur, for example, praised his defense of the Palestinians, citing
an article he wrote on "le grandeur de Arafat," despite his personal responsibility
for more than 1,000 civilian murders.
EU officials may not want to admit
it. But attacks on Jews have been mounting since the terrorist war on Israel
began in September 2000. In the last year, however, anti-Semitic attacks
in France have grown increasingly bold. In January, Paris Rabbi Gabriel
Farhi was attacked several times. In April 2002 alone, the French Interior
Ministry recorded nearly 360 anti-Semitic crimes against Jews and Jewish
institutions, according to Washington Times reporter Al Webb. [2] In May
2002, a mysterious fire erupted at the Israeli embassy in Paris.
"Yes, a synagogue was burned," Frenchmen
routinely admit, according to Poller. "But how do we know this was anti-Semitic?"
Sellam's murder was handled in much the same way, she said, although 2,000
mourners attended the popular young disc jockey's funeral. Le Parisien,
according to Poller the only print newspaper to report the crime, noted
that Sellam was Jewish and his alleged murderer Muslim, but explained the
crime as an outburst of jealousy by a lifelong friend. "Sebastian was successful
and his murderer was unsuccessful and jealous."
Something considerably darker than
professional jealousy must be at work, however, when a murderer completely
mutilates his victim's face with a fork and gouges out his eyes or stabs
a 53-year-old mother 27 times in the chest and neck.
Indeed, in Sura 8, verse 12, the
Qu'ran instructs Muslims, "Remember thy Lord inspired the angels (with
the message): 'I am with you: give firmness to the Believers: I will instil
terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers: smite ye above their necks and
smite all their finger-tips off them'."
Evidently, some Muslims take this
literally. The theme repeats in Sura 47, verse 4: "Therefore, when ye meet
the Unbelievers (in fight), smite at their necks." Citing this verse, Shafi'i
jurist al-Mawardi (d. 1058) prescribes exactly such behavior. When Allah
gives Muslims victory over mushrikun in "The Amirate of Jihad"-the non-Muslim
region of war, or Dar al-Harb-he advises, "their women and children are
taken prisoner, and their wealth is taken as booty, and those who are not
taken captive are put to death." [3]
Meanwhile, in Germany, neo-Nazis
were arrested in September for planning an arson attack on a Munich synagogue
to commemorate Hitler's November 9 Kristallnacht of 1938, in which thousands
of Jewish homes and shops were destroyed, hundreds murdered and thousands
arrested and sent to concentration camps.
Right. And two grisly ritual murders
last week in Paris, France were not anti-Semitic.
Notes
[1] Digital video film interview
by © Alain Azria / Avi Rosen / Rosenpress Agency
For further information: redaction@rosenpress.com
[2] Al Webb, "Synagogues Burn as
Europe Rages," Washington Times, Apr. 23, 2002
[3] Abu'l-Hasan al-Mawardi, al-Ahkam
as-Sultaniyyah: The Laws of Islamic Governance (Ta-Ha, 1996), p. 76.
