Ilan Halimi ..... May He Rest In Peace

With Issue first brought the death of Ilan Halimi to my attention the other day. At first, I heard not much about him on the news. Later, the news caught up to the bloggers, again.

I read a few places, but did not have a lot of time, so will make up for it now.

I went to Smooth Stone last night and found that those responsible had been captured, and that the leader of that gang Youssef Fofana had also been captured on the Ivory Coast.

Today, I returned to Janjan's With Issue and found that Someguy had put a link to another story in her comment box on Ilan. Tel-Chai Nation has posted more proof that the French police knew that this was happening simply because Ilan was Jewish.

What this poor 23 year old young man went through before he died can be found in the links provided in many of these blogger's linked news stories. Suffice it to say, it was horrendous. That the French police did not find him sooner, and that they denied that this was anti-Semitism is bad enough, but according to the article quoted on Tel-Chai Nation by Avi Green, even Israel has deserted this young man by saying little about it other than to convey condolences!

This Ilan is the same age as my son. I cannot (and never want to experience) imagine the pain of his family. I cannot understand the HATRED that can cause any human being to do this to another human being. We have men killing their wives and children, women killing their children, people killing while robbing someone, and it is getting worse all the time. But to kill someone you don't even know SIMPLY BECAUSE THEY ARE JEWISH (or Catholic, or Black or... you add your own....) is beyond my understanding. To torture another human being until they die or are near death?

Those who do not know History are doomed to repeat it....You would think that FRANCE and the other nations over in Europe would REMEMBER history.

Ah, but then we have people like the Iranian President (and others of his ilk over there... nations, not just individuals...) who deny the Holocaust ever took place. Where 11 million people died (Catholics and other Christians, Gypsies, the handicapped in the T4 Program, etc) and 6 million of them were Jews, as part of the 'Final Solution' to the 'Jewish Problem'.

But you see, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was also a Nazi, and he continued to spread his hatred... a distant relative of Arafat, who looked up to the Mufti as a hero... and so many others that have been taught this hatred for 60 more years...

But it isn't JUST the Grand Mufti and his followers who denies the Holocaust took place.

Smooth Stone also had two more posts of interest to me on that topic! Holocaust Denier David Irving has been sentenced in Austria to three years in prison, even though now he says he has seen the light.....and there are more stories about it here.

Irving claimed it was not Nazis who burned synagogues and killed Jews on Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass) in 1938 but agitators dressed up as them. He claimed the Holocaust never happened. Despite evidence dating back to the end of the war in 1945, he told the judge it was only after 1991, when he had access to the papers of the former deputy commander of Auschwitz and of the Nazi logistician Adolf Eichmann, that he came to believe in the Nazi programme.

"Naturally I apologise," he said. "I'm not a Holocaust denier. Obviously, I've changed my views. I spoke then about Auschwitz and gas chambers based on my knowledge at the time, but by 1991 when I came across the Eichmann papers, I wasn't saying that any more and I wouldn't say that now. The Nazis did murder millions of Jews."

Right, he stopped believing that in 1991. But then he sued Deborah Lipstadt for libel in 2000 and lost the case!

She points out:

"The true uniqueness of the Holocaust starts only after 1941, with the Nazi implementation of a systematic plan of murder. No other example exists of a modern government using all its forces (including post offices, banks, army, etc.) to annihilate an entire people: men, women, and children. This genocide occurred inside and outside Germany's borders.

"It is not the industrial and technological elements of the Holocaust which make it unique. If the Germans hadn't created the gas chambers, they would have continued to kill people en masse like the Einsatzgruppen did. They probably would have murdered far fewer people in four years. However, sometimes, by focusing on the significance of the gas chambers, we downplay the brutality and incredible horror, as well as the organizational aspects, of the Einsatzgruppen murders.

This article ends:

The Meaning for Israel

Many motifs which Lipstadt has analyzed in the deniers' publications on the Shoah return nowadays in a wider context vis-a-vis Israel. "There are people who say, 'I don't think there should be a state of Israel or any Jews in the Middle East, because they do not belong there.' By pulling the argument to one extreme, other extremists suddenly sound more reasonable. For instance, there are those who say, 'I am against the State of Israel but the Jews can live peacefully in a democratic Palestinian state.' Destroying the Jewish character of the state suddenly seems far more moderate than wanting the total expulsion of the Jews."

Lipstadt agrees that criticism against Israel is as legitimate as that against any other country; but she stresses the difficulty of sharply defining proper boundaries: "What is not permitted," she concludes, "is false historical analysis and the use of immoral equivalencies. One cannot compare the 2002 Jenin battle to the Shoah. Such a comparison shows either ignorance of history or misguided intentions."

Lipstadt sees this comparison as a new expression of denial. "When one speaks about Israeli soldiers as Nazis, that is a denial of what Israeli soldiers are and what the Nazis were. This is a misuse of history for political purposes. One may not like Israel, but that is different from lying about history in a court. Much current criticism of Israel is based on anti-Semitism and denial. Some of the exaggerated talk about Israeli power, Israeli strength and Israeli ability is very similar to what one has seen for decades in the writings of the Holocaust deniers and, before that, in those of the Nazis and other anti-Semites."

OH, and there was one more post I found on Smooth Stone!

You do realize that the same people who hate the Jews also hate the USA? You do realize that we are in a War? One that was declared on us long before 9/11? One that we MUST win? It is not just France that must come out of denial!

God bless!


To the family of Ilan Halimi:
My sincere condolences.

The LORD bless you and keep you:
The LORD make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you:
The LORD lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.
~~Numbers 6:24-26



Related Tags: Ilan Halimi, France, Torture/Murder, Anti-Semitism, David Irving, Holocaust Denier, Deborah Lipstadt