Crif - Francis Kalifat: "We are in the streets to say no to this denial of justice" (VIDEO)

Crif President Francis Kalifat's speech at the rally for Sarah Halimi

"My friends, we are no longer alone! We are in the streets to say no to this denial of justice.

Here in Paris, but also in Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Montpellier, Nice, Lyon and Strasbourg.

You have heard them, but I will repeat them, the names of these French Jewish victims, victims of antisemitism.

Sébastien Sellam, Ilan Halimi, Jonathan, Arieh and Gabriel Sandler, Myriam Monsonégo, Yohav Hattab, Yohan Cohen, François-Michel Saada, Philippe Braham, Sarah Halimi, and Mireille Knoll.

In this too long litany of names and faces of victims of antisemitic terrorism, each fate is unique.

Every broken life is an injunction to remember.

Every man, woman or child torn from life is a call to collectively learn the lessons of history to build a better society.

Yet there is a name for which this work of remembrance cannot be done: it is Sarah Halimi's.

And yet...

Sarah Halimi was not tortured and massacred because she happened to be in the path of the killer. Sarah Halimi was not defenestrated because she had money. No, Sarah Halimi was brutally murdered because she was Jewish and for that reason alone.

Sarah Halimi was the victim of an antisemitic crime thought out, planned and executed in an Islamist ritual and staging. Sarah Halimi is the victim of this antisemitism that French society struggles to recognize and name. She is the atoning victim of Islamist antisemitism.

By confirming the criminal irresponsibility of her murderer, the Court of Cassation definitively deprives Sarah Halimi's family of a trial essential to her mourning work, but also the whole of France of a historic trial: the trial of antisemitism which still kills today in France.

More than obvious, this is a scholar case to describe an antisemitic murder that will not go to trial.

In a context where antisemitism does not weaken, the High Court is sending a very bad signal. It takes 20 years of effort and struggle to finally recognize that the acts and violence suffered by French Jews are not ordinary violence but the violent expression of a new antisemitism.

It is a terrible regression, particularly disturbing in the impunity it induces.

How can the justice of our country both recognize the antisemitic nature of a crime and offer impunity to its perpetrator by refusing to stand trial? We are in the midst of schizophrenia!

We can't say it enough: Sarah Halimi has been killed twice. She is of course first and foremost the victim of the killer's Islamist antisemitism. But Sarah Halimi is also the victim of a denial of justice and a judicial shipwreck.

So, for her name to be inscribed in the memory of our country, the new law must bear the name of Sarah Halimi. It is a form of tribute, a tribute justice won't give her."