Once again, authorities in Europe are doing their level best to draw a veil of silence over that continent’s resurging ugliness of anti-Semitism.
I’ve reported several times on the disturbing level of blatant and violent anti-Semitism in Europe and Britain. Much of it is apparently linked to the region’s massive influx of ‘refugees’. Five years ago France was shocked by the murder of 65-year-old Sarah Halimi, whose killer screamed “Allahu Akbar” as he stabbed her. He never faced trial, after a French court ruled that he was not criminally responsible for his actions.
In 2018 Holocaust survivor Mireille Knoll was murdered by a man also yelling “Allahu Akbar”. In 2006 French Jew Ilan Halimi was tortured and murdered by a gang led by an African Muslim immigrant. The Charlie Hebdo attackers also specifically targeted a kosher supermarket.
But French authorities are doing their level best to pretend that the latest anti-Semitic killing was just an accident.
When Jeremy Cohen was struck by a tram in Seine-Saint-Denis, north of Paris, police called it an accident.
On Monday evening his family released video footage in which some of Jeremy’s last moments are seen. They are disturbing. Surrounded and jostled by a 15-strong mob, Cohen is then seen running away towards the oncoming tram.
Cohen wore a kippah and his family claim he was targeted because of his faith. ‘Jeremy’s death is linked to an attack of which he was the victim – by a gang of young people immediately before being hit,’ said Gerald Cohen, in an interview with Radio Shalom, a French-Jewish radio station.
Even after the video was made public, police are still denying that it was anything other than a routine mishap.
Had it not been for the determination of the Cohen family to investigate the exact circumstances of Jeremy’s death it would probably have remained an ‘accident’. They handed out leaflets and asked for information and eventually someone sent them the video footage.
Spectator Australia
So, what kind of “mob” was it? The video is too dark and grainy to be sure, but at least some sources are claiming that the gang was Muslim. Seine-Saint-Denis is a ‘multi-ethnic’ suburb. Over half of the district’s inhabitants are ‘of foreign origin’. It has one of the highest populations of Muslims in France.
Similar mob attacks on Jews by Muslims have become a ghastly re-occurrence, from London to Melbourne. And every time the media and authorities do their level best to sweep it under the carpet.
Of course, it could have been neo-Nazis or some other far-right gang. Oddly, though, it’s the ‘far-right’ in France who are coming to the aid of Jeremy Cohen’s family. In fact, the family specifically approached ‘far-right’ Éric Zemmour.
The candidates portrayed by the commentariat as ‘extreme right’ were the most direct. ‘Did he die because he was a Jew?’ tweeted Eric Zemmour, himself a Jew. ‘Why is this case hushed up?’ Marine Le Pen also wondered on social media if ‘what was presented as an accident could be an anti-Semitic murder’. Then she tweeted what many Jews in France will be thinking: ‘How to explain the silence on this affair and its motivations?’ The Gaullist Nicolas Dupont-Aignan claimed the ‘violence was hidden for pre-electoral reasons’.
As Gavin Mortimer writes, the “far-right” bogeyman is routinely trotted out at election time in France. There’s a very real bogeyman stalking France, all right – but it’s not Marine Le Pen.
