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A Rape in Paris
A placard equating Zionism with Nazism is displayed at an Oct. 23 pro-Hamas demonstration in the Place de la Republique in Paris. Photo: Reuters/ Valerie Dubois
JNS.org – Antisemitic violence is horrifying wherever it takes place, but in France, as we’ve learned time and again over the last two decades, a disturbing intimacy defines many of the worst incidents in that the victims were known to the perpetrators, and in some cases, even socialized with them.
In 2003, for example, a young Jewish DJ named Sebastien Salem was murdered by Adel Amastaibou, a Muslim neighbor with whom he’d been friends since childhood. The murder itself was shocking in its brutality, as Salem’s body was found with multiple stab wounds caused by knives and forks. After Amastaibou was arrested by police shortly after the murder, he told them: “I’m happy if he died, that bastard, if he’s dead, I’m too happy, this f**king Jew, dirty Jew.”
Three years later, it was the turn of Ilan Halimi, a young French-Israeli cellphone salesman, to undergo a terrifying ordeal that involved kidnapping, torture and murder at the hands of a mainly Muslim gang appropriately known as “The Barbarians.” Halimi ended up in their clutches after he flirted with an attractive young woman who was sent to the store where he worked with the express purpose of entrapping him. He subsequently spent three weeks in captivity, during which he was constantly beaten and burned with cigarettes while tied to a radiator. The gang attempted to extort 450,000 Euros in ransom money from Halimi’s relatives, believing them to be wealthy because—as one of the gang members later explained to the cops—“Jews have money.” On Feb. 13, 2006, Halimi was dumped, barely alive and with burns on 80% of his body, near a railway track on the outskirts of Paris. Discovered by a passerby who called for an ambulance, Halimi died on his way to the hospital.
Then, in April 2017, Sarah Halimi (no relation to Ilan), a widow who lived on her own in public housing in Paris, was beaten to death by her Muslim neighbor, Kobili Traoré, a petty criminal and drug dealer who had started hanging out at a local Islamist mosque. In the most abject denial of justice to French Jews since the notorious Dreyfus Affair of the 1890s, France’s highest court ruled that Traoré would be excused from a criminal trial on the grounds that his intake of cannabis on the night of the murder had rendered him temporarily insane. After that execrable decision, more than a few observers asked ironically whether stoned or drunk drivers responsible for causing fatal car accidents would be granted the same privilege.
The following year, an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor, Mireille Knoll, was murdered by two men whom she invited into her Paris apartment, having known one of them—Yacine Mihoub—since his childhood. Mihoub stabbed Knoll 11 times before setting her body alight, as part of a robbery executed because, as was the case with Ilan Halimi, she was Jewish, so she had to be wealthy. In this case, at least, Mihoub and his accomplice Alex Carrimbacus were imprisoned, as was Mihoub’s mother, who assisted the pair by cleaning the knife that was used as a murder weapon.
In 2024, the horror continues. As with other countries, antisemitic incidents in France, already at worrying levels, exploded following the Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom in southern Israel. In the first three months of this year, according to Le Monde, outrages aimed at Jews increased three-fold compared with the same period in 2023. Last week, news broke of an assault every bit as nauseating as those described above—only this time, the target was a 12-year-old girl.
The victim had been sitting in a park with a friend when she was approached by three boys between the ages of 12 and 13. According to a police account, the girl was dragged into a shed where she was beaten and then forced to submit to vaginal, oral and anal penetration. Throughout the rape, her assailants—all boys at the beginning of puberty, remember—showered her with antisemitic abuse. The two boys who carried out the rape have remained in custody, while their accomplice, who engaged in the beating and the insults but not, apparently, the rape, has now been allowed to return home.
The young girl’s ordeal, which will scar her for life, generated the usual breast-beating among French politicians, led by President Emmanuel Macron, who railed against the “scourge of antisemitism.” No doubt the rape will also be a factor in the forthcoming French elections, with far-right National Rally (RN) already exploiting it for messaging purposes, and the far-left La France Insoumise (LFI), whose parliamentarians have frequently and justly been accused of antisemitism in the wake of Oct. 7, feeling obliged to denounce “antisemitic racism.”
Yet the issues here run deeper than the statements of politicians in France and, indeed, other countries. Antisemitic violence has always exposed the particular vulnerability of Jewish women trapped in these hellish situations. Jewish women were raped and sexually humiliated during the 19th and 20th century pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe, as they were during the Nazi era, too. More recently, the abiding memory of Oct. 7 consists of the rapes of young women by Hamas terrorists, many of them at the Nova dance music festival, where more than 350 revelers were murdered. Meanwhile, other young women were carried off into Gaza by their Hamas captors. The testimonies of those who have been released leave no doubt that sexual violence was part of their experience as hostages.
Rape is, of course, an act of misogyny—a grotesque means for men to remind women of their physical power. But it is also an act of dehumanization. And it is that dehumanization that binds the rapes of Oct. 7 with the rape of a young Jewish girl in Paris. It is also a reminder that the invective that Jews encounter on social media on a daily basis has real-world consequences.
New York City has seen pro-Hamas demonstrators riding the subway and demanding to know if any of their fellow passengers are “Zionists.” Just last week, an elderly man wearing a kippah on the corner of 72nd Street and Broadway was spat on by a thug yelling “Free Palestine.” Can we honestly say that such people would shy away from even more bestial acts, like rape? Can we trust that they will stick to verbal abuse alone, as bad as that is? What happened in Paris may seem like an isolated act, but in reality, it could happen anywhere.
And if the authorities won’t protect us and our children, then we need to start protecting ourselves because our enemies are clear on one point: It’s us or them.
The post A Rape in Paris first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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NYC ‘Dyke March’ Bans Zionists From Participating in Annual Demonstration
(Source: Reuters)
NYC Dyke March, a public demonstration held by members of the lesbian community in New York City, has banned self-proclaimed “Zionists” from its annual event, citing a desire to stand against the so-called “genocide” occuring in Gaza.
The group revealed in a statement that their decision to ban Israel supporters from their ranks came after multiple members dropped out of the organization due to differences in “political beliefs and values.” After engaging in discussions with frustrated members, the NYC Dyke March committee agreed to adopt “an explicitly anti-Zionist position.” The organization claims that it will “strengthen our commitment” to fighting against Israel and advocating on behalf of Palestinians.
Last year, the NYC Dyke March previously came under scrutiny after organizers settled on “genocide” as the theme of its 2024 event. In a statement, decrying “ethnic cleansing, violence, and dehumanization,” the organization compared the ongoing war in Gaza, to the mass slaughters occurring in Ethiopia, Myanmar, and Sudan.
The organization plans on recycling the same theme for this year’s march, titling it “Dykes Against Genocide.” The group released a statement clarifying that Jews are allowed to attend and condemned the Oct. 7 slaughters as a “senseless loss of life.” After an apparent uproar from its members, the organization deleted the post and wrote that the group “unapologetically stands in support of Palestinian liberation.” In addition, the group affirmed that “anti-Zionism is not antisemitism and any language we put out which is not clearly opposed to a Zionist, imperialist agenda is harmful to us all.”
In the 17 months following the Hamas-led massacre of roughly 1200 people throughout Israel, the NYC Dyke March has produced numerous statements lambasting Israel and declaring “solidarity” with Palestinians amid their so-called “ongoing genocide.” The organization also accused Israel of engaging in supposed “pinkwashing” and “manipulative use of Jewish and queer identities,” with the aim of justifying its war efforts in Gaza.
Israel offers an expansive set of rights for members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transngender (LGBT) community, including recognition of same-sex marriages. Every year in June, Tel Aviv holds one of the largest LGBT Pride celebrations in the world. Meanwhile, members of the LGBT community are routinely imprisoned or murdered in other parts of the Middle East, including the Palestinian territories.
The NYC Dyke March’s announcement was met with widespread condemnation.
“You cannot exclude the majority of Jews and call yourself inclusive,” said the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in a post on X/Twitter, adding that the group “essentially equates Zionism with racism” in their announcement.
The post NYC ‘Dyke March’ Bans Zionists From Participating in Annual Demonstration first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Trump Administration Planning $510 Million Cut to Brown University Budget, Report Says
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks with journalists onboard Air Force One en route to Miami, Florida, U.S., April 3, 2025. REUTERS/Kent Nishimura
The Trump administration reportedly plans to terminate $510 million worth of federal contracts and grants awarded to Brown University, according to media reports.
Brown University’s failure to mount a satisfactory response to the campus antisemitism crisis, as well as its embrace of the diversity, equity, and, inclusion (DEI) movement — perceived by many across the political spectrum as an assault on merit-based upward mobility and causing incidents of anti-White and anti-Asian discrimination — prompted the alleged pending action by the federal government, according to the right-leaning outlet The Daily Caller.
The announcement comes as Brown scrambles to cover a $46 million budget shortfall and other universities across the country have faced similar funding cuts.
Brown University officials, however, denied that the university had received any directives from the Trump Administration.
“We have no information to substantiate these rumors,” Brown University provost Francis Doyle issued a statement. “We are closely monitoring notifications related to grants, but have nothing more we can share as of now.”
Meanwhile, Brown’s Jewish community rushed to the university’s defense, issuing a joint statement with the Brown Corporation which said that the campus is “peaceful and supportive campus for its Jewish community.”
The letter, signed by members of the local Hillel International chapter and Chabad on College Hill, continued: “Brown University is a place where Jewish life not only exists but thrives. While there is more work to be done, Brown, through the dedicated efforts of its administration, leadership, and resilient spirit of its Jewish community, continues to uphold the principles of inclusion, tolerance, and intellectual freedom that have been central to its identity since 1764.”
Brown Divest Coalition — an anti-Zionist group which recently saw its campaign for the university to adopt the boycott, divest, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel defeated by the Brown Corporation — weighed in too, denouncing the reported cut as “a means of suppressing all forms of popular dissent to the renewed violence of the US war machine abroad.” US Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) also criticized the move, accusing the administration “of a broader pattern of behavior…that will negatively impact communities across the country and lead to layoffs, restrict research, and more.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the Trump administration is following through on its threats to inflict potentially catastrophic financial injuries on colleges and universities deemed as soft on antisemitism or excessively “woke.” The past six weeks has seen the policy imposed on elite universities including Harvard and Columbia, rattling a higher education establishment that has for better and worse operated for decades with little interference from the federal government even as it polarized the public and contributed to a growing sense that elites are contemptuous of Americans who live outside of their cultural enclaves.
In March, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon announced the cancellation of $400 million in federal contracts and grants for Columbia University, a measure that secured the school’s acceding to a slew of demands the administration put forth as preconditions for restoring the money. Later, the Trump administration disclosed its reviewing $9 billion worth of federal grants and contracts awarded to Harvard University, jeopardizing a substantial source of the school’s income over its alleged failure to quell antisemitic and pro-Hamas activity on campus following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel. Princeton University saw $210 million of its federal grants and funding suspended too, prompting its president, Christopher Eisgruber to say the institution is “committed to fighting antisemitism and all forms of discrimination.”
Additionally, 60 universities are being investigated by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights over their handling of campus antisemitism, a project that will serve as an early test of the administration’s ability to perform the essential functions of the agency after downsizing its workforce to increase its efficiency.
One of those universities, Northwestern University, on Monday touted its progress in addressing campus antisemitism, noting that it has adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, a reference tool which aids officials in determining what constitutes antisemitism, and begun holding “mandatory antisemitism training” sessions which “all students, faculty, and staff” must attend.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Belgium Joins Hungary in Rejecting ICC Warrant Against Netanyahu, Signaling Shift in International Stance
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a joint press conference with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the Prime Minister’s office in Jerusalem, Feb. 16, 2025. Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg/Pool via REUTERS
Belgium announced it would not enforce the International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over alleged war crimes in Gaza, should he visit Brussels—marking a significant shift from the government’s previous policies.
In an interview with Belgium’s VRT broadcaster on Thursday, Prime Minister Bart De Wever was asked about Hungary’s decision to not act on the ICC warrant against Netanyahu during the Israeli leader’s visit to Budapest this week.
“To be completely honest, I don’t think we would either,” De Wever said during the interview.
“There is such a thing as realpolitik, I don’t think any European country would arrest Netanyahu if he were on their territory. France wouldn’t do it, and I don’t think we would, either.”
As Hungary welcomed Netanyahu to Budapest with full military honors on Thursday, ignoring the ICC arrest warrant against him, the country also announced its decision to withdraw from the international court.
After their meeting, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said he believes the ICC is “no longer an impartial court, not a court of law, but a political court.”
“I am convinced that this otherwise important international judicial forum has been degraded into a political tool, with which we cannot and do not want to engage,” Orban said during a press conference.
In November, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, and now-deceased Hamas terror leader Ibrahim al-Masri (better known as Mohammed Deif) for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza war.
The ICC said there were reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu and Gallant were criminally responsible for starvation in Gaza and the persecution of Palestinians — charges vehemently denied by Israel, which until a recently imposed blockade had provided significant humanitarian aid into the enclave throughout the war.
Israel also says it has gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties, despite Hamas’s widely acknowledged military strategy of embedding its terrorists within Gaza’s civilian population and commandeering civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and mosques to run operations and direct attacks.
Belgium’s center-right government, led by De Wever’s National Flemish Alliance party, took power this year after defeating a left-wing coalition led by the Socialist Party, known for its anti-Israel stance.
Under the previous government, Belgium joined South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
Since December 2023, South Africa has been pursuing its case at the ICJ accusing Israel of committing “state-led genocide” in its defensive war against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza.
Last year, Belgium’s former Deputy Prime Minister, Petra De Sutter, said, “War crimes and crimes against humanity cannot go unpunished,” referring to the ICC arrest warrants against Netanyahu.
“Europe must comply. Impose economic sanctions, suspend the Association Agreement with Israel and uphold these arrest warrants,” De Sutter wrote in a post on X.
In line with this position, former Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said in November that Belgium would “assume its responsibility” towards the ICC, emphasizing that “there can be no double standards.”
After the ICC’s decision to issue the warrants, several countries, including Hungary, Argentina, the Czech Republic, Romania, Poland, France, and Italy, have said they would not arrest Netanyahu if he visited.
Germany seems to have a conflicting stance on this matter. During a press conference, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he could not imagine the ICC arrest warrant against Netanyahu being executed during a potential visit to Berlin.
However, Germany’s Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock, criticized Hungary’s refusal to enforce the arrest warrant against the Israeli leader this week.
“This is a setback for international criminal law,” Baerbock said during a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels.
“In Europe, no one is above the law. And this applies to all areas of law,” she said.
The post Belgium Joins Hungary in Rejecting ICC Warrant Against Netanyahu, Signaling Shift in International Stance first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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