Mainstream media outlets have erased Jews from an explosive story coming out of France.

France has quietly kept on the books an edict known as Code Noir (Black Code) from 1685, most of which contains horrible laws pertaining to the possession of slaves. A slave who struck his master or master’s children in the face was to be punished by death. Slaves who gathered anywhere in public or private were to be whipped and branded. All slaves were forcibly baptized and converted to Christianity. Slaves were movable assets like property, and if they escaped, they faced whipping, branding, the amputation of their ears or death.

But the very first article pertains to Jews, before any word about slaves is mentioned. King Louis XIV ordered the expulsion of Jews from all the French islands; any Jews who remained after three months would “face confiscation of body and property.” Known at the time as the islands of French America, they included Saint Domingue (modern-day Haiti), Guadeloupe, and Martinique.

It’s about time the French repealed this horrifying edict, which they finally did Thursday in a rare unanimous vote, 254-0.

Most people never knew such a law was still on the books and were shocked that it had never been annulled. Discussion in the National Assembly turned emotional as a descendant of slaves broke into tears while addressing the chamber.

While the edict had to be repealed, “no vote alone can repair centuries of shattered lives,” Steevy Gustave, a descendant of slaves from the Caribbean island of Martinique, told the assembly.

“We are not descendants of slaves,” he said tearfully. “We are descendants of human beings born free, then reduced to the worst, reduced to slavery.”

France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, said last week that the edict should have been abolished along with slavery.

“The silence, even the indifference, that we have maintained for nearly two centuries toward this Black Code is no longer an oversight,” Macron said. “It has become a form of offense.”

But he did not issue an explicit apology.

The French, whose empire spanned four continents, ran the third-largest slave trade in the world.

Jews, who are mentioned first and foremost in the Code Noir, were victims of France’s sordid past that it has yet to fully reckon with. But The Associated Press does not mention the word “Jew” at all in its reporting on the issue.

Neither does U.S. News & World Report.

A New York Times opinion piece about the Code Noir published days before the edict was repealed devotes one sentence to the first article.

France 24 completely omits the word “Jew” from its report on the story, an outlet from the very country that ordered the expulsion of Jews from all of its islands.

You have only to read the Code Noir for yourself to see the glaring omission, which the reporters for these stories surely did, as they cited it extensively in their reporting. One can only wonder why.