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Published on 5 March 2016

Ilan Halimi : A case that does not go away

At the time of this despicable crime, Roger Cukierman was already president of CRIF.

By Violaine of Courières, published in La Vie February 17, 2016
 
For the Jewish community, this case remains emblematic of the late French awareness against the resurgence of anti-Semitism.
 
Roger Cukierman remembers. He was, at the time, already president of CRIF: "Thirty French, Caribbean and Portuguese guys tortured him to extract money from his family. All this, based on a prejudice : "the Jews are rich and they will pay". No one in the building of Bagneux, where Ilan was held, took his phone, even anonymously, to tell about what was happening."
 
For the Jewish community, these anti-Semitic acts were the harbingers of the current jihadism. This drama "announced in its way a series of criminal gestures : Mohammed Merah killings in 2012, the shooting of the Jewish Museum in Brussels in 2014, the drama of the Hypercacher last year," said Bernard Cazeneuve in Bagneux. Faced with such atrocities, ten years later, Roger Cukierman "understands better how young people drift towards jihadism." "Since November 13, 2015, attacks against the Jews of France were extended to the French society as a whole," the Jews were, as usual, the sentries," he sighs... Read more.