A troubling tide of anti-Semitism is sweeping Britain and France

A day after the Israeli ambassador to Britain, Tzipi Hotovely, was harassed as she left the London School of Economics, a murder trial in France reached its grisly conclusion. Yacine Mihoub was handed a life term after being convicted of stabbing 85-year-old Mireille Knoll multiple times and then setting her body alight in March 2018. The elderly woman, a Holocaust survivor, had known Mihoub since he was a boy, but he still snuffed out her life because she was a Jew. An accomplice claimed Mihoub screamed ‘Allahu Akbar’ as he stabbed Knoll.

It was a murder almost identical in nature to that of Sarah Halimi, slain in the same arrondissement of Paris a year earlier. Her assailant also shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ as he took the life of the retired Jewish doctor. 

The killing of Madame Halimi was anti-Semitic, even if parts of the French political establishment pretended it wasn’t. Her killer, Kobili Traoré, subsequently escaped trial after France’s highest court of appeal ruled that he was not criminally responsible for his actions.