Alyssa Lappen files an alarming report in FrontPage today, detailing the murder of Jews in Paris — and the fact that the major French media outlets considered the news unfit to print.
“. . . two Paris Jews were brutally murdered and disfigured–because they were Jewish. A minor tabloid, Le Parisien, reported the grisly events. But not a single major French newspaper–Le Monde, Figaro or Libération–covered the stories, according to an interview with a victim’s mother, distributed by Rosenpress in Revue-Politique.com. In one case, the police advised the family not to call the crime anti-Semitic.
“Sebastian Sellam, 23, was a popular disc jockey at a hot Parisian night club called Queen. At about 11:45 p.m. on Wednesday November 19, the young man known as DJ Lam C (a reverse play on his surname) left the apartment he shared with his parents in a modest building in of Paris’ 10th arrondissement near la Place Colonel Fabien, heading to work as usual. In the underground parking lot, a Muslim neighbor slit Sellam’s throat twice, according to the Rosenpress interview. His face was completely mutilated with a fork. Even his eyes were gouged out.
“Following the crime, Rosenpress correspondent Alain Azria reported, Sellam’s mother said the Muslim perpetrator mounted the stairs, his hands still bloody, and announced his crime. ‘I have killed my Jew. I will go to heaven,’ he reportedly said. The alleged murderer’s family was well known for rabid anti-Semitism, Mrs. Sellam reportedly told Rosenpress, a point confirmed by the victim’s brother. Within the previous year, Sellam’s mother reportedly said, the family found a dead rooster outside their apartment door with its throat slit, and their Mezuzah was ripped from their door post. Leaving dead roosters is reportedly a traditional warning of impending murder.”
Why would this man think he would go to heaven for killing a Jew? Maybe because of this hadith: “When judgment day arrives, Allah will give every Muslim, a Jews or Christian to kill so that the Muslim will not enter into hell fire” (Mishkat Al-Messabih, no. 5552).
“The homicide especially traumatized the Paris Jewish community: According to Rosenpress, another gruesome murder, also allegedly committed by a Muslim, occurred earlier that evening. Chantal Piekolek, 53, was working in her Avenue de Clichy shoe store when Mohamed Ghrib, 37, stabbed her 27 times in the neck and chest.
“Piekolek’s 10-year-old daughter hid in the storeroom behind the shop with a girlfriend and heard the entire crime. There was no evidence of sexual assault, according to Rosenpress. Paris reporters believe the cash remained in the shop’s register, but this detail remained unconfirmed at press time. . . .
“Initial reports in small news outlets naturally terrified and confused the French Jewish community. Intense anti-Semitism has been building for more than a decade, according to Nidra Poller, an American expatriate in Paris for several decades. Anti-Semitic crimes frequently go unreported in the major press, she said, suppressed by French authorities, victims fearing retribution–and news agencies. Jewish community members thus usually learn of attacks as they did during previous centuries in North African and Eastern European ghettoes–by word of mouth.
“In 2001, a rabbi in Poller’s neighborhood was kidnapped and held hostage in a car for two hours. Another religious Jew was kidnapped in similar fashion, Poller reported. A Jewish woman and her husband, whom she had just picked up at a local hospital, were abused and threatened with murder for several hours by their Muslim taxi driver, she said. . . .
“French Jews live in constant fear, Poller said. Everyday activities, such as taking a taxi, going to synagogue or shopping can bring attacks. The entire community is traumatized. This pattern was effectively repeated with the November murders in Paris after initial reports indicated that both cases were anti-Semitic crimes. . . .
“Given intense and worsening anti-Semitism in France and Europe, there seems little hope that the government will actually investigate the arson, much less prosecute the perpetrator if it finds one. After all, EU officials deny the severity of the problem. Last week, they shelved an EU report on the subject for fear of antagonizing Muslims, who were behind many of the incidents examined. . . .
“Poller left France for a U.S. speaking tour in November with one week’s news publications to read on her flight–two weekly magazines and three major newspapers. All of them, she said, were ‘reeking with hatred [for Jews].’ They also sympathized extensively with terrorists. News reports are not factual. ‘They are sermons,’ Poller said. A profile of philosopher Gilles Deleuze in the weekly Nouvel Observateur, for example, praised his defense of the Palestinians, citing an article he wrote on ‘le grandeur de Arafat,’ despite his personal responsibility for more than 1,000 civilian murders.”