Did a controversial black comedian cause the murder of Ilan Halimi?

Yossi Lempkowicz:

Sammy Ghozlan, head of a French anti-Semitism monitoring group, has said that the speech of an “alleged comedian” influenced the killers of Ilan Halimi, the young Jewish man murdered in a Paris suburb last week.

“The tortures inflicted upon Ilan could only be perpetrated by criminals motivated by anti-Jewish hatred instigated by a certain comedian who has made headlines,” Sammy Ghozlan said in an interview with European Jewish Press.

Ghozlan made no direct reference to Dieudonne, a controversial black comedian who has been accused of repeated anti-Semitic remarks and who generated outrage among French Jews.

Dieudonne, who is of African origin, asserted that Jews had played a “central role” in the 15th-century slave trade. In December 2003 he appeared on French TV dressed as an Orthodox Jew and performed the Nazi salute while shouting “IsraHeil”.

He is to stand trial for comments made in 2003 in which he declared that Jews were “a sect, a rip-off”.

“One cannot treat a human being like Ilan was treated if one isn’t an animal with a deep anti-Jewish hatred transmitted by racist declarations,” Gozhlan added.

“This is the climate in the suburbs: hatred of the Republic, of police forces and of Jews.”

As the founder and head of the official anti-Semitism Vigilance Bureau (BVCA) that was created in 2000 to monitor anti-Semitic acts in France and collect testimonies, Ghozlan was among the first to ask police to investigate and determine whether there was an anti-Semitic motive to Halimi’s murder and whether the gang was targeting Jews.

Ghozlan said there was a shift in the character of anti-Semitism in France since mid-2005.

“The perpetrators of such acts are no longer the same people. Before they were mainly of Arab-Muslim origin who expressed solidarity with the Palestinian people and as such became anti-Semites. Today we have noticed that it is no longer the same. People of African origin are also becoming quite violent,” Gozhlan, a 63-year-old former police superintendent, said.

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