February 13 is an ominous anniversary. Sixteen years have passed since the murder of Ilan Halimi, the young, Jewish French cellphone salesman. On this date in 2006, Halimi was murdered, having been kidnapped and held for ransom in a basement in a Paris suburb where he was starved, tortured, and beaten for 24 days before his captors gave up their depraved plan to cash in on a young Jewish life.
Like the hostage taker in Colleyville, Texas, Halimi’s captors bought into the worst antisemitic tropes about Jewish power. The “gang of barbarians” who kidnapped him thought that the powerful and monied Jewish community of their fever dreams would come forward and pay a hefty ransom for his release. Their bigotry fueled a brutal, grotesque crime that still scars the French Jewish community.
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Source: Medium
URL: https://j0nathan-g.medium.com/the-ongoing-alarming-rise-of-antisemitism-is-terrorizing-jews-in-europe-94b56bb86f3