Sometimes, I feel like I need to rub my eyes to ensure I am not living in some kind of parallel universe.
In a display of overwhelming consensus, many Americans are celebrating a sense of justice in the murder verdict of former police officer Derek Chauvin.
Juxtaposed in the news reporting to the Chauvin verdict, a recent and radically different verdict in a cold blooded murder case was released. In the wake of this verdict, we are left to contend with a heinous miscarriage of justice.
The murderer, Kobili Traore, got off scott free.
Iexaggerate, you say? Look at the facts:
His victim, Sarah Halimi, a French woman in her sixties, was brutally and gruesomely thrown from her apartment balcony to her death by Traore, as she fatally hit the ground.
No crime. No provocation. No nothing on her end. Just a nice older lady. Just clean as a whistle living, sitting at home minding her own business — and boom! A shriek of “Allahu Akbar” from her murderous neighbor, then violently thrown to her death.
Seems like a pretty open-and-shut case of cold blooded murder with a clear anti-Semitic motive (“Allahu Akbar”) to boot.
Yet, somehow the French courts determined that the murderer, Traore, is off the hook.
The reasoning, you ask? Since he was apparently in a drug-induced state when he murdered Sarah Halimi, he is not responsible for his behavior.
Whhhhat? Seriously, what am I missing here?
Because Traore committed a crime while in a state of committing another crime — cannabis is illegal in France — therefore his first crime trumps and exonerates his second crime? Sorry, analytic thinking may not be my strongest suit — more of an intuitive person over here — but how does this make a morsel of sense, let alone not spit in the face of supposed justice?
Hypothetically, let us assume for the moment that marijuana smoking were, in fact, legal in France — so this removes accountability? This ought to heighten accountability!
Swap out marijuana smoking with drunk. According to the French court’s logic, any death resulting from drunk driving should not be deemed a crime? If anything, the decision to drink and drive caused the death. One crime is the corollary of the other.
According to the French court’s logic, lesser crimes are now mitigating factors, or legal loopholes, for being free of responsibility for greater crimes.
This is a basic situation of avoiding the consequences of bad behavior.
The curious and warped reasoning in letting Traore off simply mocks any sense or semblance of justice. This distorted reasoning is nothing short of infuriating.
But forget even that. When you strip all the legal illogic away, what is left is the unvarnished truth of this story: Jew hatred.
We see clearly the story here. An identifiably observant Jewish woman murdered by a Jew hater who, making no bones about it, publicly infuses her murder with his anti-Semitic motivation, expressed in his crystal clear shout of “Allahu Akbar” as he throws a human being off a balcony to her death!
Again, let’s make a substitution here. An animal, for Sarah Halimi—forgive me, Sarah Halimi. Imagine how horrible it would be to throw a living animal from a balcony to be smashed to smithereens on a sidewalk below. Your dog. Your cat. PETA would be up in arms. And rightly so. This is the type of disturbing behavior that is a metric in diagnosing a sociopath.
Yet, somehow, the worth and blood of a human being is folded into some legal quark that not only does not hold a murderer responsible for his reprehensible crime of killing another human being — and so gruesomely too — but rather leverages the his preceding crime to reward his murderous behavior.
It is such situations that bring to mind the phrase from a Talmudic episode: “Olam hafuch ra’itti, it is an upside down world I have seen.”
We have witnessed a tale of two verdicts. The blood of our sister Sarah Halimi should cry out to each and every one of us as we raise our voices in protest against this blatantly anti-Semitic miscarriage of justice. Sarah Halimi — this name, her fate, should be etched in Jewish history forever.
May Sarah Halimi’s memory be for a blessing, but also a lesson for all — one that propels us into action, to stand up for Sarah Halimi’s innocent, spilt blood that cries from the ground, as her murderer evades justice.
Copyright © 2021 by the Intermountain Jewish News
