LEBANON DAILY STAR
by Robert Satloff
January 27, 2015

….I was reminded of this story reading of the heroism of Lassana Bathily, the Malian-born Muslim man who saved up to 15 people, including many Jews, by hiding them in a freezer in the besieged kosher market attacked in Paris a few weeks ago. “Yes, I helped the Jews. We are brothers,” he told an interviewer. “This is not a question of Jews, Christians or Muslims, we are all in the same boat.” These stories are important. To be sure, they should not be used to gloss over the real dangers posed by what French prime minister Manuel Valls bluntly calls “radical Islamism” or to inflate the numbers of righteous heroes – Muslim and otherwise – willing to risk their lives to save innocents, whether during the Holocaust or today. Rather, the reason to retell these stories as loudly and often as possible is as a compelling reminder of the power of free choice. READ MORE