Je Suis Sarah
People's sense of shock and betrayal was captured well by Bernard-Henri Lévy. 'A man who savagely beat and murdered an old Jewish woman while screaming "Allahu akbar" is set free because he was high. Another man in France recently received a prison sentence for killing a dog', he wrote. The Simon Wiesenthal Center has expressed concern about the message that might be sent to other violent-minded anti-Semites - namely, that you can potentially get away with racist murder if you take some drugs beforehand. 'Snort drugs to kill a Jew', said the Center's director for international relations, Shimon Samuels.
It isn't only the legal
rulings that are discomfiting. There's also the silence. Yes,
thousands of people valiantly demonstrated for justice for Sarah Halimi. But
where is the broader global outrage? Where is the social-media campaigning?
Where is the knee-taking? Where are the corporations insisting that Jewish
Lives Matter? Where, even, are the women's rights campaigners? As Lévy says,
there has been 'silence' from feminist groups in France: '[They] typically do
such remarkable work in support of battered women, but had nothing to say about
this case.'