The Sarah Halimi affair reveals France's fractures

Exactly five years ago, in April 2017, the Sarah Halimi affair began, the Jewish pensioner murdered by her 27-year-old neighbor, deemed totally irresponsible. Today, the case has come full circle: closed in judicial terms, the story was buried in January 2022 with the report of a parliamentary commission torn apart, but confirming the absence of police and judicial dysfunctions. Nathanaël Majster, one of the lawyers consulted by Sarah Halimi's family, describes the possible avenues for reviving this case, which remains a wound and an insult for Jews, whether or not they recognize themselves in «the community».

You have to see Sarah sleeping. Imagine this woman alone in her low-income Parisian apartment in Belleville, for those who know these mixed-race streets, where a not-so-secularized variant of Islam now readily manifests itself.