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Barbarians of suburbs target French Jews
Sunday Times ^ | April 2, 2006 | Matthew Campbell

Posted on 04/01/2006 5:21:04 PM PST by West Coast Conservative

THE pretty schoolgirl known as Yalda wore tight white trousers and thigh-high boots to the rendezvous. Her target, a young Jewish telephone salesman, quickly fell under her spell. He meekly followed her when she suggested a nightcap at her place. It would be his last date.

The testimony of this 17-year-old femme fatale who happily offered herself as “bait” in the kidnapping of Ilan Halimi, whose tortured body was found on wasteland, has shocked a country which is haunted by a painful history of anti-semitism.

Yalda’s only moment of doubt came when she heard Halimi’s shrieks as he was carried away by thugs in balaclava helmets. “He screamed for two minutes, with a high-pitched voice like a girl,” she told investigators.

She soon forgot, however. On Halimi’s first night in captivity, she and her boyfriend celebrated in a hotel room paid for by the kidnappers.

Forget the French idyll portrayed in such books as A Year in Provence. France is being forced to confront her dark side as details emerge of horrific crimes in the suburbs.

Testimony from this grim underbelly, the immigrant banlieues — literally “places of banishment” — has fortified the elite’s view of young immigrants on the wrong side of the Paris ring road as “barbarians at the gate”.

For years the Parisian establishment has quaked at the prospect of angry hordes invading their affluent heartland and last week that nightmare came true as gangs of hooded youths robbed and bludgeoned white students attending anti-government demonstrations.

Disquiet about the spread of barbarism across the boulevard périphérique has been fuelled by the chilling story of Yalda.

The gang she worked for was known as “les Barbares”, the Barbarians, and included blacks, Arabs and whites from Portugal and France.

Barbarians seemed an appropriate name. The shocking cruelty inflicted on Halimi seemed to have little to do with efforts to extract money from his anguished family. It evoked the sadistic moral universe of A Clockwork Orange, the novel by Anthony Burgess, with a dose of anti-semitism thrown in.

Thanks to Yalda’s charms, Halimi was imprisoned and tortured with acid and cigarette burns for more than three weeks in the heart of a council estate.

More than 30 neighbours in the building knew what was happening but said nothing about the crime, part of a worrying wave of attacks against Jews all over the country.

Besides Yalda, several women have been arrested in an investigation into their role in botched efforts to lure other Jewish men into “honey traps”.

“He wanted a Jew,” a girl called Audrey told police, referring to Youssouf Fofana, the charismatic leader of the Barbarians, who was listed by the girls in their telephone directories as “Youssouf the barbarian”.

His choice of victims was based on two anti-semitic myths: that Jews are all rich and that they stick together. “They’re a big community,” Fofana told Audrey. “United and willing to pay.” Audrey lost her nerve after reeling in two targets, one of whom was rejected when it turned out that he was not a Jew. She infuriated Fofana when she failed to follow up on her second victim. “When you start something you have to finish it,” he shouted.

Tifenn, a small, dark 19-year-old from Brittany, was also a procurer in this macabre operation. She described herself as being less “sexy” than the other girls and said that her role was limited to putting prettier school friends in touch with Fofana.

Like Audrey and Yalda, Tifenn attended a boarding school on the outskirts of Paris that was funded by social services. Yalda had been followed by children’s courts and was receiving counselling: at 13 she had been the victim of une tournante — as the commonplace ritual of gang rape has come to be known in the suburbs.

Other examples of savagery in these lawless enclaves were exposed on Friday at the trial of Jamal Derrar. He was accused of burning 17-year-old Sohane Benziane to death in 2002 in Vitry-Sur-Seine, where last year’s orgy of suburban rioting began, after she defied his order to stay away from his “territory”.

“You’re frightened, huh?” he jeered, according to testimony, after pouring petrol over her head and taking out his cigarette lighter. He lit the lighter several times in front of her face to torment her to tears until finally setting her alight.

“It is barbarism,” Kahina, the victim’s sister, said last week. “I want barbarism rejected. It is becoming so banal. We are not in a war. I refuse to live in a country that cannot defend its citizens.”

Another girl, 18-year-old Chahrazad Belayni, was doused with petrol by a suitor and set alight in November last year. She remains in a coma. In Marseilles in 2004, Ghofrane Haddaoui, a 23-year-old woman from the suburbs, was stoned to death by a gang of youths.

The choice of Halimi as a victim because he was Jewish was a particularly distressing component of the crime for a nation whose anti-semitic past included wartime collaboration in the transfer of Jews to the death camps.

France has the biggest Muslim and Jewish populations of any European country and in some suburbs it is not uncommon to see anti-Jewish grafitti. “We’ve got blacks and Arabs in one camp and then it is the Jews in the other,” said Mamadou Menibe, a young man of west African origin from Vitry-Sur-Seine.

The Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France claims that violent attacks against Jews began rising abruptly in France at the start of the second Palestinian intifada in 2000.

Some experts say it has been fuelled by Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala, a popular comedian who blames Jews for the suffering of blacks and was found guilty last month of incitement to racial hatred.

The hostility has led thousands of French Jews to move to Israel in the past five years, including about 3,300 last year, the highest number in 35 years.

So obsessed was Fofana, the Barbarians’ leader, with targeting Jews that he had established which shops were Jewish by checking which of them closed during Jewish holidays.

When he met Yalda he was impressed. “With you,” he said, “I can do wonders. With your physique you’ll make a fortune . . . all the boys will fall into the trap.”

He offered her £3,000 to approach Halimi in his shop and lure him to a meeting. She got Halimi’s number and rang him up to ask him out on a date. She told her friend Tifenn that she found Halimi “friendly” and “cute”. After they met in a cafe, she invited him back to her fictitious flat on the other side of the ring road. The Barbarians were lying in wait.

Some commentators seem traumatised by too much reality, upbraiding the foreign media for painting “la belle France” in an unflattering light. But the truth is ugly, particularly when it comes to the barbarians camped at the gate.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Extended News; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events; Philosophy; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: antisemitism; faithfreedom; faithfreedomorg; france; frenchjews; islam; judeophobia; persecution; sharia
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To: 10mm

You are so right. I couldn't have said it any better.


41 posted on 04/01/2006 9:14:10 PM PST by Astronaut
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To: West Coast Conservative
The gang she worked for was known as “les Barbares”, the Barbarians, and included blacks, Arabs and whites from Portugal and France....Youssouf Fofana

Doesn't sound French, Sub Saharan African, other than the variety in Sudan, Somalia, etc. , Polish nor Portuguese. You don't suppose he's an Arab practitioner of the RoP, do you?

42 posted on 04/01/2006 9:33:20 PM PST by El Gato
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To: Fred Nerks
France. In Broad Daylight. Is this our future?

They are free to try to make it so. However they should be advised that unlike the French, probably especially French Jews, Americans are heavily armed. Someone trys the shiite with my kids or grandkids, and I'll introduce them to either Mr. Browning's finest, my all American 12 ga. pump, or my German/Portuguese Immigrant 7.62 NATO tool.

43 posted on 04/01/2006 9:37:00 PM PST by El Gato
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To: West Coast Conservative
We are not in a war. I refuse to live in a country that cannot defend its citizens.”

Obviously you are in a war, along with the rest of us infidels. As to your second point, then move, because the country you are in clearly isn't interested in defending *you*, they are more inclined to defend your attackers. I suggest the UK, the US, Australia or Israel, if you want a country that defends it's citizens. If you want one that allows it's citizens to defend themselves, there are probably only two choices, the US or Israel.

44 posted on 04/01/2006 9:40:12 PM PST by El Gato
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To: conservatrice

"If the bloody idiot cannot crack open a dictionary, he doesn't deserve to be read."

Don't you think that perhaps the meaning of the word may have become somewhat modified in common use since 'the feudal ages'? Enough so that you needn't use up all your ire on the author of the article - ire that may have been better directed at the barbarians who really are still living in the Dark Ages?


45 posted on 04/01/2006 10:11:55 PM PST by Fred Nerks (Read the bio THE LIFE OF MUHAMMAD free! Click Fred Nerks for link to my Page.)
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To: Fred Nerks

Thank you for the additional information from your page. The Ottoman Empire absorbed culture from others. What it contributed was horrible. The Ottoman genocide prepared the way for the war against Jews by Hitler.


46 posted on 04/01/2006 10:42:46 PM PST by sine_nomine (I voted for George Milhouse Bush.)
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To: West Coast Conservative
Besides Yalda, several women have been arrested in an investigation into their role in botched efforts to lure other Jewish men into “honey traps”. ... His choice of victims was based on two anti-semitic myths: that Jews are all rich and that they stick together. “They’re a big community,” Fofana told Audrey. “United and willing to pay.” ...

Tifenn, a small, dark 19-year-old from Brittany, was also a procurer in this macabre operation. She described herself as being less “sexy” than the other girls and said that her role was limited to putting prettier school friends in touch with Fofana.

These girls don't sound to me like innocent victims. Rather, they are part of the gang and its activities.

47 posted on 04/01/2006 10:50:24 PM PST by BlackVeil
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To: sine_nomine

You are SO right!


48 posted on 04/01/2006 11:01:00 PM PST by Fred Nerks (Read the bio THE LIFE OF MUHAMMAD free! Click Fred Nerks for link to my Page.)
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To: frannie
The Muslims, from what I have read, have entered many countries all over the world to instigate trouble IMHO

In a lot of countries like Canada, rules were changed to favor Muslims and Arabs in the '70s and '80s. I can't prove it, but have no doubt it was at least partially because of antisemitism on the part of the social engineers - nameless, faceless bureaucrats that make these decisions behind closed doors where the average voter cannot influence them. So they were in essence, invited in, and anyone who raised any concerns about it was branded an extremist.

49 posted on 04/02/2006 4:22:08 AM PDT by Northern Alliance
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To: dennisw; Cachelot; Nix 2; veronica; Catspaw; knighthawk; Alouette; Optimist; weikel; Lent; GregB; ..
If you'd like to be on or off this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.
Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking the keyword or topic Israel.

---------------------------

50 posted on 04/02/2006 5:45:19 AM PDT by SJackson ([Iraq] Reconstruction isn’t news is it? Chris Matthews)
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To: Fred Nerks

You bet your sweet a** it is if we don't wake up, pronto.


51 posted on 04/02/2006 6:27:08 AM PDT by doberville
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To: Fred Nerks

Are you kidding? It's here already! I've read over and over an estimated 20% of illegals who cross the border into the United States are VIOLENT felons.


52 posted on 04/02/2006 6:30:08 AM PDT by Uncle Vlad
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To: West Coast Conservative

"Grog no like Jooos".

53 posted on 04/02/2006 6:34:10 AM PDT by DoctorMichael (The Fourth-Estate is a Fifth-Column!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
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To: Fred Nerks

"Speechless."


And yet, it says it all.


54 posted on 04/02/2006 8:55:01 AM PDT by Blzbba (Beauty is just a light switch away...)
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To: Fred Nerks

No, it is theirs. France has already surrendered to the dune baboons..


55 posted on 04/02/2006 9:43:44 AM PDT by sheik yerbouty ( Make America and the world a jihad free zone!)
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To: West Coast Conservative

BTTT


56 posted on 04/02/2006 9:52:18 AM PDT by aculeus
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To: Northern Alliance
Thank, I knew this but it had slipped my mind. I feel that most, if not all of Europe, is antisemitic though it is not out in the open.

I fear if we don't do something our country will follow suit. I may be wrong but I believe they have been setting up all over this country. They then live in the same area as do the Hispanics, so they can elect their own representatives.

As the Hispanics do, they have large families.

I may be just an old person who is borrowing trouble but I think not.
57 posted on 04/02/2006 3:09:39 PM PDT by frannie (Be not afraid of tomorrow - God is already there!)
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To: Fred Nerks
Could you have stopped the murderer of Van Gogh? Here's the translation of the letter pinned to the dead mans chest with a knife:

Dear Mr. Nerks,

As a matter of fact, no, since this occurred in the Netherlands, one of the many countries in which the people are disarmed (as are you, being a Brit), and I am fortunate enough to not have to live anywhere in Europe.

BUT, if this had occurred in most red states in America, and more particularly, if it had occurred in one of those American states which allow concealed carry, the answer would have been a qualified YES, i.e., if it had occurred in front of an armed citizen there would have been one or more fewer Muslims walking the streets.

As far as the note goes, I cannot understand what it is saying, after reading the first few paragraphs.

I direct your attention to what I originally wrote, e.g., Americans would not so easily cow before deranged individuals, we have means of defense.

58 posted on 04/02/2006 4:30:02 PM PDT by OldPossum
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To: OldPossum
Well, it may be the future in certain urban areas of blue states, but it sure ain't the future in rural areas of red states. Good ol' boys have a way of dealing with this sort of thing, you know.

I don't know where you live, Possum, but in my conservative, red, southern state, which is North Carolina, there are large amounts of violence that were unthinkable a couple of decades ago. And our local good old boys show no sign whatsoever of containing it in any way.

This might not be LA, here, but we have gang initiation murders, frequent drive-bys, and every other flavor of insane urban violence.

Maybe there are some pristine spots left -- maybe out in Montana or somewhere (even there you have to worry about "funny cowboys!") -- but you sure have not bought a ticket to Norman Rockwell's America by moving to North Carolina, although it is a state that I love.

59 posted on 04/03/2006 6:49:11 PM PDT by LK44-40
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To: conservatrice
And sadly, most Jewish lobbies in Europe are rabidly pro-immigration.

Sadly, the very same thing can be said for the USA.

I think there was the sense among many Jews that they would be safer and more comfortable in a country that was very pluralistic rather than one dominated by a highly coherent Christian -- mostly protestant -- culture.

This, IMO, was an unspeakably tragic miscalculation for us all.

60 posted on 04/03/2006 6:57:21 PM PDT by LK44-40
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