The Murder of Ilan Hamili

Ilan Halimi was buried Thursday in France. Here's what happened:

Halimi was found dying, covered with burns and cuts, on Monday February 13. He had been kidnapped three weeks earlier, after a Muslim gang sent a blonde to seduce him. Halimi had agreed to meet with her after meeting in a chat room. Immediately after his abduction his mother went to the police, saying he was kidnapped by anti-Semites. Sources in the community said three Jewish youngsters had managed to escape similar abdications in recent months.

The police told Halimi's mother, Ruth, to stop all telephone connection with the kidnappers, as a way of forcing them to use electronic mail, which was traceable. The police did not know that during the five days in which the kidnappers tried in vain to contact Halimi's family, Halimi suffered terrible torture. One of the kidnappers said, "We put our cigarettes out on him because he was a Jew."

A few days after Halimi was found, the Paris public prosecutor, Jean-Claude Marin, told the media that the murder was a criminal event, and "no element of the current investigation could link this murder to an anti-Semitic declaration or action."

The reports about Halimi in France did not mention that he was Jewish. Halimi's family was livid. His mother accused the authorities of ignoring the anti-Semitic factor. "Had Ilan not been Jewish, he would not have been murdered," she said. She was widely quoted in the French media, and the authorities began to retreat.

On Tuesday French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said that "the murder had anti-Semitic motives." "They kidnapped and murdered him because he was Jewish - in their words, the Jews have money," he said.

This coming Sunday a huge procession in his memory is scheduled to take place in Paris. Jewish organizations, French political parties and anti-violence groups are to join in the demonstration.

It seems that it is human nature to enter a state of denial about serious threats to one's safety and that of one's family. Even as the hyenas circle the herd the gazelle graze nervously in hopes that the killers will pass them by.

Caroline Glick finds this phenomenon rampant in the governments of both France and Israel and is deeply disturbed by it. The civilized world is being challenged by Islamism to defend itself, and in too many quarters the response is to cower and to pretend there is no threat.

This timidity only emboldens those who are even now circling their psychologically weakened prey, darting in to take a nip, wearing it down, draining away its will to live. When the hyenas sense that the West has lost its will to fight for its civilization they will surge upon it, rip it to pieces, and gorge themselves on its remains.

The murder of this young Jewish man at the hands of French Muslim kidnappers is not just a horrific atrocity, it is a synecdoche for the future the Muslim world envisions for the West. Ilan Halimi and others, like Theo Van Gogh, are just the first drops of the approaching storm.