Sarah Halimi was a 65-year-old retired doctor and schoolteacher and a widowed mother of three children. She lived in the Belleville neighborhood of Paris. She was also an Orthodox Jew, the only one in her building.
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On Apr 4, 2017, a Malian immigrant and neighbor named Kobili Traoré entered Halimi's apartment from the balcony, shouting "Allahu Akbar" and verses from the Quran. Witnesses heard her screaming as he beat her to death for an hour. He then tossed her body from a 3rd-floor window.
This week, a French court of appeals upheld a lower court's ruling that the murderer could not be held "criminally responsible" because he had smoked cannabis prior to the murder.
A word about the murderer, Kobili Traoré. A repeat offender with a record of aggravated violence, he had never spent time in a psychiatric institution prior to the murder. The court sent him to a drug rehabilitation center and banned him from contacting Halimi's family.
This episode has stunned and outraged France's Jewish community, which largely views the antisemitic character of the murder as beyond dispute and considers the case to be yet another failure in the country's handling of antisemitism.
President Macron, too, had criticized the lower court's ruling, saying that "even if, in the end, the judge decided that there was no criminal responsibility, there is a need for a trial." He was promptly rebuked by a judge for supposedly violating France's separation of powers.
What message does Sarah Halimi's murder send French Jews? What does it say about the French judicial system's ability to protect them—and hold those who attack and occasionally murder them to account? And what, most of all, does it say about France?
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From 1948 and on, more than 850,000 Jews were forced to leave Arab countries and Iran, where they had lived for millennia. Today fewer than 15,000 remain.
These are their stories.
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More than 265,000 Jews lived in Morocco—the largest Jewish community in the Muslim world—in 1948. In June of that year, 43 were murdered in pogroms. Today only 2,000 Jews remain. One million Israelis are of Moroccan descent, 11% of Israel's total population.
Some 150,000 Jews lived in Iran in 1948. Anti-Jewish hostility drove tens of thousands to leave following Israel's establishment. Emigration increased dramatically following the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Today only 8,300 Jews remain in Iran.
The recent brouhaha surrounding @SethRogen's comments on Israel has raised questions about how American Jews—particularly young, liberal American Jews—feel about the Jewish state.
Luckily, we have @AJCGlobal to offer up some cold, hard facts.
Let's dig in, shall we?
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According to @AJCGlobal's 2018 survey of American Jewish opinion, fully 79% of Jewish Americans—roughly four out of every five—believe a thriving State of Israel is vital for the long-term future of the Jewish people (bit.ly/3idB9W0).
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.@AJCGlobal's 2019 survey of American Jews on antisemitism in America sought to understand what Jewish Americans consider antisemitic.
A whopping 84% of American Jews of all ages said the statement "Israel has no right to exist" is antisemitic (bit.ly/2EVqOzz).
This made me cry: Today at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, 92-year-old Melpomeni Dina Gianopoulou met 40 descendants of the Jewish Mordechai siblings, whom she and her two sisters hid in their home near Thessaloniki, Greece during the Holocaust. "Now I can die quietly," she said.
Melopmeni is reunited with Sarah Yanai and Yossi Mor, two of the five Mordechai siblings who lived in her family's home for two years during the war. After the hiding place was discovered, the sisters helped the Jewish family flee into the mountains and provided for them there.
Melopmeni embraces one of Mor's grandchildren, an officer in the Israel Defense Forces. This may be one of the last reunions of its kind, as the numbers of both Holocaust survivors and rescuers dwindle.
Some facts: The Palestinians did not "provide" Jews with a safe haven in Palestine. Palestinian leaders collaborated with the Nazis, did all they could to prevent Jews from escaping to Palestine, and drew up plans for the extermination of the Jews already there if the Nazis won.
As Rommel rolled across North Africa, Palestinian leader Amin al-Husseini met with Hitler and Himmler and they developed a plan to murder the Jews of Palestine. An SS unit was stationed in Athens with the express purpose of murdering Palestine's Jews.
After the anticipated conquest of Palestine by Rommel's troops, the SS unit was to have functioned like the Einsatzgruppen in eastern Europe, following the invading forces, rounding up hundreds of thousands of Jews, and killing them en masse.
An incredible 85% of European Jews say antisemitism is either a very big problem (45%) or a fairly big problem (40%) in their countries; only 15% disagree or say they don't know. #No2Antisemitism
Nine out of every ten European Jews—89%—say antisemitism has increased over the past five years; nearly two thirds (63%) say it has increased a lot. #No2Antisemitism
British Jews rallied yesterday against antisemitism in the Labour Party. French Jews will be rallying tomorrow following the murder of an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor in Paris. German Jews today sounded an alarm over antisemitic bullying in Berlin schools. Europe, 2018.
Austrian Jews are boycotting far-right ministers in the new government. Dutch Jews are experiencing the highest number of antisemitic attacks in ten years. Icelandic Jews are concerned about legislation to ban circumcision, a fundamental Jewish practice.
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Swedish Jews have all but fled Malmö, the country's third-largest city, amidst a wave of antisemitic attacks. Swiss Jews have noted a 56% increase in antisemitic incidents in 2017. Belgian Jews are protesting antisemitic imagery in official textbooks.
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