France Continues Its Coverup of an Anti-Semitic Murder

In July, the French president Emmanuel Macron declared that “the judiciary must shed full light” on the murder of a Parisian Jew named Sarah Halimi, who was brutalized and killed by a Muslim neighbor on April 4 while he recited verses of the Quran and called her “Satan.” Macron’s comment, writes Michel Gurfinkiel, was a refreshing change after seemingly systematic attempts by France’s government and press to downplay the crime—attempts that still continue. The story begins with the police, who, thanks to a phone call from one of the killer’s relatives, arrived before he even entered his victim’s apartment but did not intervene until after she was dead:

Some [witnesses] gave details about the exact location of the assault, the attacker’s identity, the fact he vilified his victim as a Jew and as “a Satan” while hitting her, or even—as far as the Muslim neighbors were concerned—the Quranic verses he chanted. Yet the police still failed to storm Sarah Halimi’s apartment and rescue her. . . .

The behavior of the police was strange enough throughout this tragic night. Further questions were soon to be raised about the handling of the case. First, while the murder and its circumstances were reported almost instantly within the Jewish community and by the press agency AFP, the mainstream media didn’t mention it at all for two days. . . . Likewise, very little was shown or said about a protest march by 1,000 people in the neighborhood on April 9. Considering the enormity of the crime, the reporting remained bafflingly low-key. . . .

No less disturbing was the public officials’ silence. French members of the cabinet or government officials usually react to such crimes ex officio. Some may even take a more personal stand. . . . No such reactions occurred after Sarah Halimi’s murder, even though the minister of the interior granted an emergency audience to the leaders of the Jewish community. . . .

Third, there is the legal angle. The issue of the attacker’s sanity, and thus of his responsibility [for the crime], was left undecided for more than four months, and is still pending. . . . More disturbingly, the investigative judge, Anne Ihuelu, has declined to charge [the killer] with anti-Semitic motivations.

Read more at Jewish Chronicle

More about: Anti-Semitism, Emmanuel Macron, France, French Jewry, Politics & Current Affairs, Sarah Halimi

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society