Where’s the Coverage? Only Woman Murdered at Charlie Hebdo Was “Definitely Killed Because She Was Jewish”

If you have seen any of the news reports of the terrorist attacks in Paris, you have witnessed the media bending over backwards not to call the attacks antisemitic, though even the president of France labeled the attack on the Hyper Cacher kosher market as “a terrible antisemitic attack.”

What you have seen even less coverage of is the fact that the murderous attack at the Charlie Hebdo magazine was also antisemitic. The online Jewish magazine Tablet writes:

Of the dozen killed at Charlie Hebdo by [Hyper Cacher murderer Amedi] Koulibali’s collaborators, the Kouachi brothers, there were 11 men and one woman. Her name was Elsa Cayat. Other women on the premises, also held at gunpoint, were permitted to go on living. One of the murderers told Sigolène Vinson, a Charlie freelancer who had gone to the morning meeting: “I’m not going to kill you because you’re a woman. We don’t kill women, but you must convert to Islam, read the Quran and cover yourself.” Then he cried out: “Allah hu Akbar.”

Now here’s the thing. The killers must have known that Elsa Cayat was Jewish. There is no likelier explanation for the chilling fact that of the women on the scene, Cayat was the one singled out for murder. Cayat’s cousin, Sophie Bramly, told CNN’s Erin Burnett that the killers’ selectivity, in this regard, has not come in for much comment by French media. Nor, outside the CNN report, has the point been much noted in the Anglo-American media. But there it is. In the eyes of the killers, male cartoonists were enemies of Allah. Women who were not otherwise cursed were deemed salvageable. After all, Allah is merciful. But a Jewish woman is unsalvageable. As in 1976, when non-Israeli Jewish passengers were assigned to the Israeli group and kept hostage by Palestinian hijackers when other nationals were released; as in 1985, when Leon Klinghoffer and other Jews were sequestered for special treatment on the Achille Lauro—in 2015, Elsa Cayat forfeited her right to live by virtue of being a Jew.

You may have learned from the coverage that the Kouachi brothers knew exactly who they were looking for, that they called out the names of their victims and methodically executed them. But very few media outlets have reported on Elsa Cayat. If you did not see this brief interview on CNN, you may not know that the only woman killed was killed because she was Jewish. This is a major aspect of the story. This proves that the gruesome terror attacks in Paris were not just an assault on freedom of expression, not just an assault on freedom of the press, not just an assault on liberal democratic values. The terror attacks were all of those and more.

They were also attacks on Jews because – and this is the element that must be stressed – the Jews are the canary in the coal mine. When the forces of evil come for the Jews, the rest of society should pay attention because the rest of society is next.

The terrorists who “don’t kill women” killed one woman. A Jewish woman. Where’s the coverage?