They called themselves “The Barbarians.” Not “Al-Qaeda in Paris,” or “French Jihadis.”
The French thugs didn’t demand the release of any Iraqi or Palestinian or Afghani political prisoners, or mention any political motive when they kidnapped Jewish cellular telephone salesman Ilan Halimi.
They just demanded money.
They first demanded half a million dollars, which Halimi’s family insisted it couldn’t afford. They then amateurishly suggested the family “get the money from your synagogue,” and even called a local rabbi to tell him, “We have a Jew,” mistakenly believing this would galvanize him to raise money.
There’s no doubt “The Barbarians’” reference to Halimi’s religion stings, and resurrects images of France’s long, troubling vacillation between offering Jews vibrant sanctuary and executing or expelling them.
France’s last, most deadly Jewish expulsion was only fifty-odd years ago, so wounds are still fresh. Even so, France has one of Europe’s largest and most dynamic Jewish populations, who are largely middle class. France also has one of Europe’s largest and most volatile Muslim populations, who live in relative poverty.
“The Barbarians” demanded money, and telephoned in their torture of Halimi when his family didn’t send any. Still, the media debates whether “The Barbarians” targeted Halimi because he was Jewish, and some “Barbarians” were “nominally” Muslim. Or was Halimi victimized only because, in the words of a French detective actually working the case, “For these criminals, ‘Jew’ equals money?”
The media has frenzied up the latest “proof” of what many assert is not just France’s seemingly intractable anti-Semitism, but now an anti-Semitism of global proportions since many of “The Barbarians” were, in the curious words of the New York Times, “people of different backgrounds: The children of blacks from sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean, of Arabs from North Africa, of at least one Persian from Iran, and of whites from Portugal and France.”
And “The Barbarians’” leader, Youssouf Fofana, noted the Times, was “born in Paris to at least nominally Muslim immigrants from the Ivory Coast.”
But do the media’s attempts to link Halimi’s victimization to terrorism and anti-Semitism ring true? Are The Barbarians an anti-Semitic, terrorist group?
No, they aren’t. They’re criminals who belong in prison for their actual crimes, rather than the snippets of idiocy that come out of their mouths. Equating them with terrorists simply blurs a line already cutting deeply through the world’s genuine democracies.
The Times reports that a Palestinian charity flier was found in the family home of one of over the 20 “Barbarians” who victimized Halimi. But were “The Barbarians” sending their ill-gotten gains to Hamas?
Unlikely.
Contrastingly, America’s Mafia was run by “at least nominally” Roman Catholic immigrants and their offspring, yet the press didn’t speculate whether the Mafia financially supported the Vatican. Americans seldom think of France as having murderous criminal gangs. We think of wine and cheese, of mustached men wearing black berets and playing accordions. We think of French fries and croissants and the Eiffel Tower.
Some of us did see “The French Connection,” a film that wove its way through France’s seamy heroin trade. And we watched “Arabs” riot in Paris’s poorer suburbs last fall. But we don’t look too closely.
If we did, we’d see France has hosted both Muslims and Jews since ancient times, but often unwillingly. Historically one of the most violently Christian nations in Europe, even avowedly secular France has struggled in modern times with its anti-Semitism. But it has also struggled mightily with its “Arabs.” Why haven’t commentators spoken about the Algerian Harkis’ plight in France today?
The Harkis are those 150,000 Algerian loyalists who, armed only with shotguns or their bare hands, fought alongside France in its Algerian War. Harkis and their descendants now populate France’s poorest suburbs, where this past summer’s rioting broke out, and where “The Barbarians” held Halimi. To Algerians, the Harkis were loathed collaborators. To the Frenchmen they supported, the Harkis were fraternal freedom fighters.
When the Algerians won their war — a vicious struggle in which kidnapping, torture, murder, and corpse mutilation were known on both sides — these Frenchmen smuggled Harkis into France, knowing that in Algeria, they’d face certain, terrible death.
Nevertheless, France sought to expel the Harkis and, when this became impractical, to cut them out of French national life. In turn, the Harkis protested their mistreatment — and not always diplomatically.
Their children have inherited their discontent. But the media sees only what it wants.
“No other motive, aside from sheer hatred of Halimi’s Judaism, is apparent,” wrote novelist Nidra Poller last week in the Wall Street Opinion Journal of “The Barbarians’” crimes.
It’s far from true.
But it makes a good next novel, that’s for sure.
