"The Sarah Halimi case—a brutal anti-Semitic assassination followed by an ongoing denial of justice—may be construed as the 'original sin' of the current French centrist administration headed by President Emmanuel Macron.
Sarah Attal Halimi, a 65-year-old Orthodox Jewish retired physician and a mother of three, lived alone in a modest apartment on Vaucouleurs Street, in Paris's 11th arrondissement, a middle- and lower-middle-class neighborhood stretching from Republic Square and Bastille Circle to Nation Circle in the center of the city. On April 4, 2017, she was attacked in the middle of the night, beaten to death, and defenestrated by a 27-year-old Malian Muslim neighbor, Kobili Traore.
The murder took place in between the two ballots of the 2017 presidential election, when Macron was already poised to be the next president but not yet elected; and the ensuing legal and political injustices are not so much a matter of individual guilt as a systemic flaw. The president has been undoubtedly shocked by the murder and subsequent denial of justice, and has attempted to correct it. He was not able, however, to do so effectively, and that may be held against him next year when he will run for reelection...
While Sarah Halimi's tragic fate is eliciting much grief and compassion, and while concern about anti-Semitic crimes is very real, the emphasis has been shifting—precisely because of the inept prosecution—to the broader issue of a failing judicial system that is closely linked, in turn, to a decline in governance..."