Students, community members and a foreign ambassador met at the
Yitzhak Rabin Hillel Center of Jewish Life at UCLA on Tuesday to
commemorate the life of a Jewish man whose kidnap, torture and
murder in France last month has raised concerns within the Jewish
community about anti-Semitism.
Ilam Halimi, 23, was a mobile-telephone store clerk in Paris who
was found alive on Feb. 13 south of Paris, handcuffed, naked and
burned after being tortured for three weeks by a gang demanding a
large ransom. He died of his injuries on the way to a hospital.
According to French Consul General Phillippe Larrieu, French
authorities say anti-Semitism was behind the attack.
Larrieu described anti-Semitism as racism, bigotry and the
“negation of Republican values.”
Hillel Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller called the murder “an
incident of gross anti-Semitism,” one in “a spade of
incidents that have made the Jewish community feel very
vulnerable.”
The memorial service for Halimi was sponsored by the UCLA Center
for Jewish Studies, UCLA Hillel and the French Consulate of Los
Angeles.
“We felt that it was appropriate to note the man was
tortured and murdered very brutally only because he was
Jewish,” Seidler-Feller said.
At the memorial, students sang songs in Hebrew and people bowed
their heads and crossed their hands in prayer. French Deputy Consul
General Olivier Plancon lit a memorial candle and the ceremony left
the audience in silence and quiet reflection.
History Professor David Myers said he hoped the memorial would
“remind the community that anti-Semitism, called the longest
hatred, is still alive.” During the memorial, Myers praised
the French Consulate for being “very quick to attend to the
concerns of the Jews” at the local level. He said he hoped
the event would educate the UCLA community about the prevalence of
anti-Semitism.
The story struck a powerful chord for four reasons, Myers said:
“Halimi’s youth, his innocence, the brutality of it and
the way a toxic ideology motivated the murder.” The crime
revives not only the issue of anti-Semitism but the broader issue
of a “narrow understanding of religion, (which is) extremely
dangerous,” Seidler-Feller said.
Students said they were particularly disturbed by the violent
nature of the hate crime.
“The idea that somebody my age had to undergo three weeks
of torture alone … is incomprehensible,” said Diana
Tehrani, a third-year biology student.
Holocaust survivor Doris Montrose said she felt the memorial was
important because she didn’t “want it to be ignored
like the majority of murders before the Holocaust.”
The service was “really intended for students ““ Jew,
Christian, Muslim, secular,” Myers said, but few outside the
Jewish community were in attendance.
With reports from Bruin wire services.