The Ilan Halimi case: issues of institutional racism?

Now that the Ilan Halimi case has gone mainstream, almost two weeks after the young Parisian Jew was found dying of the horrific injuries his kidnappers inflicted on him, the French state has gone into the level of gesture solidarity politics it does so well.

We've already had President Chirac and the French Prime Minister, Dominic de Villepin, attending the Jewish community's memorial service for him in the Rue de la Victoire synagogue last Thursday. Not that I want to deride this. After all, I doubt that Tony Blair and the Queen would show up at a memorial service for any young Jew, if one were to be similarly kidnapped and then brutally tortured to death in England.

Today there is due to be a huge protest march in Paris, involving government ministers, all the main political parties, anti-racist and Jewish communal organizations. But it's already provoked controversy and the withdrawal of some of the most activist anti-racist organizations. That's because the Front Nationale and the ultra-nationalist Movement for France (MPF) are participating. And they have been using the Halimi murder to push their anti-Muslim, anti-immigration agenda:

On Friday, the anti-racism organization MARP announced that it would refuse to attend the rally for this reason, charging that both movements were using Halimi's murder to whip up anti-Muslim sentiment and thereby encouraging racism. The National Front, for instance, described the murder as "the result of 40 years of uncontrolled immigration," while the MPF denounced "the Islamization of France."

Since I last posted about the murder, the leader of the gang responsible, Youssef Fofana, has been arrested in the Ivory Coast, where he'd fled. He confessed to the murder, but denied that his motives were anti-semitic. He claims it was others than he who tortured Ilan Halimi and finally poured white spirit over him and set it alight just before he was dumped and left near a suburban train station in Paris.

Fofana's told a story of a whole series of blackmail and kidnap attempts by his gant going back over three years, using aliases similar to Corsican mafia gangs for the blackmail attempts.

A quarter of the blackmail attempts were on Jews. According to Le Monde, a good proportion of the others they tried their luck with had Jewish-sounding names. Nicholas Sarkozy, the French Interior minister who has been the most forthright of the French leadership in condemning the murder as anti-semitic, reported that Salafist and pro-Palestinian literature was found in the home of one of the kidnap gang. He also confirmed that four out of the six kidnap attempts made by the gang were of Jews.

Allison Kaplan Sommer has mordantly and consistently blogged the twists and turns of the French and international press as they hovered around whether to call this horrific crime really anti-semitic, or perhaps just a little bit anti-semitic, or perhaps "only" contingently anti-semitic. For the latter, there is the star example of the French police spokesperson who remarked that the singling out of Jews was "only" because the criminals believed all Jews have money, and if they'd have believed Martians have money, then they'd have gone for Martians.

It seems for it to be "really" anti-semitic the gang would have had to have had copies of the Protocols, and for anti-semitism to have been their main motive, with the issue of money coming in as an afterthought.

That thinking seems to me to be part of the problem. Believing Jews all have money and stick together to protect only their own is a core element of anti-semitism. You don't have to sign up to everything Hitler believed in to be thinking anti-semitically. And if you find it perfectly rational and understandable that this gang should have centred on Jewish victims and gone for others with Jewish sounding names, yet issue a statement to the press denying that anti-semitism was a factor in the crime, as did the Paris Procurator, Jean Claude Morin, then you are indeed part of the problem.

And there's the many still unexplained issues of the police handling of the case. Allison Kaplan Sommer's most recent post on the Halimi case suggests one reason why the police so consistently denied anti-semitism was an issue. That was that they were wary of the case turning out to be a hoax by someone mentally disturbed, like the notorious case of the supposed metro attack on a young Jewish woman in 2004. But if that were the reason, how does it explain the fact that the police must have been able to listen in to the gang's many phone calls to the Halimi family, and saw the photo of him with a gun at his head, which they emailed to the family? The family made statements to the press reporting that Koranic verses had been said over the phone, which only the police had identified as such, because they hadn't recognised them. Were those statements correct or not?

It all begins to remind me more and more of the initially lamentable police response to the murder of Stephen Lawrence, and to other racist murders of black people in England, where the police proved extremely reluctant to acknowledge racism as a factor, and indeed as the key factor in the murder.

Eventually, the campaign by the Lawrence family got taken up by the Daily Mail, because it happened that Stephen Lawrence's father had done some work for the then editor. He became a sympathetic supporter of the campaign. The resultant Macpherson enquiry found that institutional racism was a major factor beind the police's original near indifference to the Lawrence murder . Not out and out overt racism, but habits of thought which inter alia assumed that if black people were involved in a crime they were likely to be either the perpetrators or otherwise involved in criminal activity, such as drug dealing. As a result of that inquiry, there have been major changes in the attitudes of the police, and a readiness to examine their own processes of thought. That in turn led to a wider acknowledgement of institutional racism as a factor in many areas of UK state policy, a factor influencing discriminatory treatment of black and other minority ethnic groups.

Which brings me to the issue of the current actions of the French state. Yes, there are the impressive solidarity gestures and the strong public commitments about bringing the whole story of the kidnap out into the open.

But where is there any recognition by French politicians and officials that institutional anti-semitism might be an issue? So far, I haven't read of any commitment to hold an enquiry into the handling of the case by the police and the prosecution authorities. The enquiries promised by Sarkozy and others are limited to discovering the motives behind the kidnap and murder. It still seems that it's only after demonstrations by the Jewish community and the publication of the Halimi family's story in the French left, Israeli and European Jewish press that they rolled into action, and acknowledgement of the crime as anti-semitic.

Meanwhile, there's the readiness to label the crime as a blow for Islamism, as the latest strike  of the clash of civilizations. This morning I found a vile comment from the racist (and miniscule) Jewish Defense League, the organization founded by Meir Kahane, on one of my posts about the Halimi murder. It calls on the Jews of France to form themselves into armed gangs to combat the "Islamic terror organizations". I deleted it.

And that reminds me of the widespread response to the Paris riots of last Autumn. At the time, I posted on out how labelling them as Islamist-inspired did not match the rioters' slogans and the modes of demonstration seen across France. It was clear to me that Islamist agitators and opportunists were keen to stoke build on the existing rage and discontent which to me was strongly reminiscent of the US Watts riots of the late sixties.

It seems to me that the gang's profile doesn't at all match that of an Islamist group. Islamists would hardly use the Corsican mafia as one of their reference points. And it was more likely the traditional European stock in trade of anti-semitism, long established in France, and shared by the police, that "understood" that you go for Jews if you want rich victims, because of course all Jews are rich, and even if they aren't, they'll club together to rescue their own. But Islamism was there as a point of reference that maybe provided what they could see as moral justification for their inhumanity in the appalling tortures they inflicted on Ilan Halimi. And it seems to have provided the images and the taunting they inflicted on the family.

It's too convenient for western commentators simplistically to blame Islamism for some complexities of racism and anti-semitism which have equally long roots back home. But there are no excuses. The buck starts here. And stops here.

Comments

[westbankmama]

Excellent post. The bottom line is that anti-Semitism is prevalent in France - and ingrained so much in some people's minds that they don't even recognize it when they come across it.

[Stalker]

See the link for a text in French about this "barbarian" affair.
Congratulations for your work.

[Joseph McNulty]

French antisemitism does not explain his horrific injuries. They can only by explained by reference to Islamism, in which the life of a Jew (or Christian or any infidel for that matter) is little better than an dog's. Not only did they attempt to ransom him, like any criminal gang seeking profit, they also tortured him, which makes sense only in terms of Islamism. I understand that they put their cigarettes out by rubbing them on his skin only because he was a "dirty Jew." Like the Nazis, they considered their victim to be subhuman because he was a Jew. That explains the cruelty towards a helpless victim. In the end, it does not matter when the antisemitism originated. Nazism and Islamism are two peas in the same pod and have been for many years.

[Sebastien]

Excuse me, I'm sure that you are very well intentioned but I stopped reading after

"That's because the Front Nationale and the ultra-nationalist Movement for France (MPF) are participating. And they have been using the Halimi murder to push their anti-Muslim, anti-immigration agenda:

On Friday, the anti-racism organization MRAP"

That someone woudl refuse to walk alongside Jean Marie Le Pen is understandable. His record on what he feels about jews is mixed. Philippe de Villiers MPF party is not at all what you are portraying it to be. Just because he doesn't like the islamisation of France does not make him an extremist.

The MRAP (spelled MARP in your text) is an islamist organuisation close to the Muslim Brotherhood, which uses anti racism as a vehicle to expand islam in France.

Please don't think that Philippe de Villiers is some kind of French Nick Griffin.

Cordially

Sebastien

[JFM]

The other aspect has been the complete demonization of Jews and Israel by the media for decades. More exactly since 1967 when De Gaulle reoriented French diplomacy towards favoring Arabs and started a purge of Isreal sympathisers in the media and military. Also since then the French media have been heavily infiltrated by people coming from teh far left who tend to ahte Israel.

It is a French TV who produced the fake "Mohammed al Dhurra" death reportage. And when you read French media it would seem no evil is perpetrated in the world but the one against Palestinians. Palestinian murders against Isrealis? Don't exist. Palestinian atrocities against their own or in Lebanon? Don't exist. Genocide in Soudan? Doesn't exist.

And this you have Dieudonné (a black comedian) who between two wheanings about white (western) crimes against blacks, never miss an occasion to drop a tear about poooooooor Palestinians and his show reeks anti-semitism of near genoidiacl proportions (in fact only the fear of judicial retribution bars him of openly disclosing his mind). But this activist of "blackism" never tells a word about slavery in Soudan and the genocide aginst black poulations.

Fofana is only the product of four decades of media branch washing and of Dieudonné drivel.
BTW, many lamposts in Bagneux the city where Fofana lived have sticks of "Urgence Palestine" the list headed by Dieudonné for the past. european elections. Bagneux is also a communist-controlled city meaning that people like Fofana are exposed to lots of pro-palestinian propaganda. And of course none about Soudan, a cause who never interested the communists.

[Stogie]

That's because the Front Nationale and the ultra-nationalist Movement for France (MPF) are participating. And they have been using the Halimi murder to push their anti-Muslim, anti-immigration agenda:

On Friday, the anti-racism organization MARP announced that it would refuse to attend the rally for this reason, charging that both movements were using Halimi's murder to whip up anti-"Muslim sentiment and thereby encouraging racism. The National Front, for instance, described the murder as "the result of 40 years of uncontrolled immigration," while the MPF denounced "the Islamization of France.""

Sounds like the National Front and the MPF dare to tell the truth. Three cheers for them!

[Love Supreme]

Then there's the Gayssot-Fabius Law criminalising so-called Holocaust denial, instigated by a half-Jew and a communist.

Just the sort of daft, one-sided illiberal law calculated to foment anti-Jewish feeling.

[Jack]

The sad reality is that when it comes to looking out for Jews France has a terrible record.