In Paris in 2017, Kobili Traore murdered his sixty-five-year-old Jewish neighbor, Sarah Halimi, after beating her for at least 30 minutes while reciting Quranic verses and shouting anti-Semitic epithets. This was not the first time anti-Semitic violence, now frequent, turned deadly in 21st-century Paris; it wasn’t even the first such incident in the 11th arrondissement. But what shocked French Jews, and eventually a wider segment of the French public, was the way the media and then the courts treated the case. Michel Gurfinkiel writes:

Instead of prompt justice, a process of cover-up and procrastination set in. While the murder was instantly reported by Agence France-Press and within the Jewish community, the mainstream media ignored it for two full days and then barely mentioned it for seven weeks. . . . The judicial investigation and prosecution was equally troubling. Kobili Traore was not sent to jail on a preventive basis, which is almost automatically the rule in France for all manner of crimes, but rather to psychiatric hospitals. On April 7, François Molins, the public prosecutor in charge of the case, declined “for the time being” to characterize it as “anti-Semitic.”

Psychiatric experts were consulted over and over again, as if the prosecuting judiciary would not be content with anything less than an exonerating opinion, which they finally obtained: the use of [marijuana], the experts conceded, might have “momentarily” altered Traore’s mental perceptions, thus rendering him unaccountable in court. By contrast, the fact that Traore had spent the . . . preceding day praying at a local Salafist mosque was not taken into consideration. Likewise, no crime reconstruction—again, a quasi-automatic practice in France—was done.

Political correctness may have been . . . crucial in the Sarah Halimi case. . . . [T]he murder took place in between the presidential election’s two ballots. While Macron stood well ahead of his only challenger, the far-right leader Marine Le Pen, in every opinion poll, some people, unbeknownst to Macron, may have been afraid that the brutal assassination of an elderly Jewish lady by a young African Muslim would vindicate Le Pen’s anti-immigration platform. Hence, perhaps, a move to sweep the news under the carpet, at least until the second ballot.

While the far left and the extreme right have responded with frenzied outrage to Israel’s attacks on Iran, middle-of-the-road, establishment types have expressed similar sentiments, only in more measured tones. These think-tankers and former officials generally believe that Israeli military action, rather than nuclear-armed murderous fanatics, is the worst possible outcome. Garry Kasparov examines this mode of thinking:

Now that the Islamic Republic is severely weakened, the alarmist foreign-policy commentariat is apprising us of the unacceptable risks, raising their well-worn red flags. (Or should I say white flags?) “Escalation!” “Global war!” And the ultimate enemy of the status quo: “regime change!”

Under President Obama, American officials frequently stared down the nastiest offenders in the international rogues’ gallery and insisted that there was “no military solution.” “No military solution” might sound nice to enlightened ears. Unfortunately, it’s a meaningless slogan. Tellingly, Russian officials repeat it all the time too. . . . But Russia does believe there are military solutions to its problems—ask any Ukrainian, Syrian, or Georgian. Yet too many in Washington remain determined to fight armed marauders with flowery words.

If you are worried about innocent people being killed, . . . spare a thought for the millions of Iranians who face imprisonment, torture, or death if they dare deviate from the strict precepts of the Islamic Revolution. Or the hundreds of thousands of Syrians whose murder Iran was an accomplice to. Or the Ukrainian civilians who have found themselves on the receiving end of over 8,000 Iranian-made suicide drones over the past three years. Or the scores of Argentine Jews blown up in a Buenos Aires Jewish community center in 1994 without even the thinnest of martial pretexts.

The Democratic Connecticut senator Chris Murphy was quick and confident in his pronouncement that Israel’s operation in Iran “risks a regional war that will likely be catastrophic for America.” Maybe. But a regional war was already underway before Israel struck last week. Iran was already supporting the Houthis in Yemen, Hamas in Gaza, Hizballah in Lebanon, and Russia in Ukraine. Israel is simply moving things toward a more decisive conclusion.

Perhaps Murphy and his ilk dread most being proved wrong—which they will be if, in a few weeks’ time, their apocalyptic predictions haven’t come true, and the Middle East, though still troubled, is a safter place.