Hiding the French antisemitism

The main defendent in the Ilan Halimi murder was sentenced to life in prison.

Youssouf Fofana, leader of the gang that mastermind Halimi’s kidnap, torture and murder, which was described by a leading police officer as the most brutal and sadistic in modern French history, was sentenced to life (with a minimum of 22 years). Of the 26 other defendants in the case, two were acquitted and the rest received sentences of between six months and 18 years. Fofana admitted in court that the plan was to “kill a Jew”. Halimi, a 23 year-old shop clerk, was chosen at random.

However, if there’s not much coverage of the verdict in the Ilan Halimi murder trial, Tom Gross writes that it’s deliberate.

Nidra Poller, who was in the court for the verdict last night, writes from Paris here that the strange timing of the verdict (after 10 pm on Friday when much of Paris had already departed for the “14th July” weekend, the biggest French holiday of the year, and also after the Jewish Sabbath had started when Halimi’s friends and families, many of whom are observant Jews, had left the court) was probably no accident and designed to minimize media coverage. Indeed state-owned France 3 TV unashamedly admitted that the verdict was announced during the Sabbath in order to avoid incidents.

Steven Erlanger of the New York Times manages to obfuscate the obvious antisemitism of the crimes.

Others saw the case as a matter of poverty, ignorance and neglect by the state of its responsibilities to immigrants.
…
Mr. Fofana told the police that his motive was money, not racial hatred. Jean Balan, a lawyer for one of the other defendants, said, “This anti-Semitism certainly is not based on philosophical, historical or religious criteria, but on crude clichés that first associated money and Jews, then associated Jews, the West and evil when they were looking for an alibi for their barbarism.”

Read Tom Gross’s account – if you have the stomach – and then read Erlanger’s. See if you can believe that the motive was money.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.