British petition for Netanyahu to honour Muslim Hostage hero
British Jews are being urged to sign an online petition calling on Benjamin Netanyahu to honour a kosher store’s Muslim worker who saved the lives of several Jewish customers during this month’s terrorist attack in Paris.
It comes as French authorities awarded Mali-born Lassana Bathily, 24, with a French passport, after he turned off the stockroom’s freezer and hid a group of shoppers inside before sneaking out through a fire escape to help police.
At the ceremony this week, Interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Bathily’s “act of humanity has become a symbol of an Islam of peace and tolerance”.
Bathily responded, saying: “People are all equal to me and skin colour isn’t a matter.”
In the UK, a mixed-race black and Jewish woman from St. John’s Wood, who said she identified with Bathily, began a petition calling on the Israeli prime minister to recognise his bravery, moral courage, and intellectual honesty in reinforcing the principle that the human right to life trumps all other rights”.
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