Ilan Halimi

The case of Ilan Halimi, a young Frenchman kidnapped, tortured and killed because he was a Jew, illustrates just why we must stop talking of a ``clash of civilizations,'' and of ``ancient hatreds,'' as if people kill because of where they are born, or what language they learn.

Halimi was kidnapped for money. He was tortured to torment and frighten his family into paying ransom. Those who participated in the plot were Muslim and Christian and non-religious; white, black and brown; of French, Iranian and African parentage. Their anti-Semitism, as Nicolas Sarkozy remarked, was in their belief that all Jews have money and power -- so it was OK to kidnap a Jew, and OK to be indifferent to the suffering of a Jew. They didn't come by that belief because they were Muslims, or Christians, or African, or Gallic. It wasn't their civilization and it wasn't their genes. It was the time and place in which they grew up, and so a kind of monument to contemporary France's hypocrisy and indifference.

Most striking to me: The neighbor who said ``I knew they had someone down there.'' He didn't call the police. Apparently one doesn't turn in kidnappers in his quartier.

He did allow, though, that he would have intervened if he'd known Halimi was being tortured. Rare is the mind without a fine moral sense.