"She came into the mobile telephone store on the Boulevard Voltaire, pretending to be interested in the new devices. Later on, she got the telephone number of the salesman, Ilan Halimi, and left. She called him the next day, telling him that she wanted to meet him again. Halimi, suspecting nothing, was not cautious. He was 21 years old, his whole life in front of him. How could he have guessed that when he was supposed to meet this pretty young woman in a cafe, he had actually made a date with death-" A new film titled "24 Days: The Truth about the Ilan Halimi Affair," has just been released in France. Directed by Alexandre Arcady and adapted from an account co-written by Ilan's mother, Ruth Halimi, the film tells the story of Halimi's abduction, torture and death. The young woman from the cellular phone shop lured Halimi, a young Jewish man, to Hauts-de-Seine, a poverty-stricken suburb of Paris. There, he was attacked by several young men, members of a gang of Muslim immigrants, who dragged him to the boiler room of a nearby apartment building. They imprisoned him in the cellar and tortured him, trying to extort a ransom from his family and from the Paris Jewish community. The kidnappers called Ruth Halimi and her now ex-husband many times and sent pictures of Ilan in captivity, demanding 450,000 euros ($612,000) for his release. After 24 days of failed negotiations with the local police, Halimi was found, brutalized, handcuffed and naked near a suburban railway station. His body showed signs of burn and knife wounds. He died en route to the hospital. Eight years have passed since the case made headlines in the France. With the release of Arcady's film, Halimi's mother Ruth and sister Yael told Israel Hayom, in a long nighttime telephone conversation, about Ilan. The conversation took place several days before Memorial Day in Israel. In fluent English and broken Hebrew, Ruth said, "When you lose your child and you are aware of all the terrible things he suffered, you are overwhelmed with guilt. Maybe there was something we didn't do. Maybe we didn't warn him enough. When I see the bereaved families, the mothers whose children died in battle, I think to myself that this is the history of the entire Jewish people." At the beginning of the interview, Ruth stressed that she has chosen not give interviews to the French media for fear that they will not understand her properly. She spoke continuously, not answering questions she found uncomfortable. She has become more observant since the murder and phrases such as "thank God" frequent her speech. The rare laugh she afforded herself during the interview was beautiful. 'Words can kill' Ruth did not always choose silence. About three years after the incident, in 2009, she published a book titled "24 Days." It was published in France around the time of the kidnappers' trial. In the film, as in the book, the viewers learn of the chain of events from Ruth's point of view: from the day she was told that her son had been abducted, through the police negotiations, to the dilemma regarding whether or not to pay the ransom. "I would have paid it if I had been able to, but the police forbade us to talk," Ruth said. "Maybe there was a chance to bring my son back home." She did not go to the film's premiere and has not seen it, even though she is its protagonist. "I live with this pain every single day, so why should I see it as well-" she said sadly. Still, when she was invited to attend a Memorial Day ceremony in Jerusalem she did not hesitate. "In the first telephone call I received from Dan Kalmanovich, who organized the event, I was very touched. I asked right away. 'Why didn't you speak with me about Ilan before-' It is a story that must be told over and over, so it is important to me to bring it out. If another young Jewish man is saved because of it, that will be my biggest reward. My son's death will not have been in vain, and I must convey this message." Ruth recalled that "memorial days have become particularly important to me since my son's death. In the United States, France and Israel, Jewish mothers tend to worry about their children more than usual. People of other nationalities tend to laugh at us because of that, but we need to be careful and not trust everybody -- and I want to get that message out to every young man and woman in France and all over the world." Ruth's two daughters have seen the film, which describes the family's ordeal and leaves out the torture inflicted on Ilan. "The film was very close to what we went through. That was our life," says Yael, the elder daughter. "It's very educational, and also conveys a strong message about anti-Semitism." What would Ilan have said about the film- "He would have liked it. I believe he sees everything where he is, and that he is pleased that he and what happened to him have not been forgotten, that he did not die in vain. For us, beyond saving another young man or woman, the message is also for non-Jews -- sometimes, words can kill. The sentence 'Jews are rich,' which may sound innocent enough, led a gang of normal young men to demand money and abuse a human being. I believe that in Israel, it would have ended differently because in Israel, people do everything possible to save life. Here, the police failed because they did not understand how dangerous this gang was." "I think Ilan would have liked the film very much," Ruth says, lending strength to her daughter's opinion, "because in the film, as in the book, he is an amazing boy who loved to give and trusted people. He had a love of humanity in every sense of the word. Now, people in the United States want to make an American version of the film. I'm glad that the whole world will see the incident, which is reminiscent of the Holocaust, but happened in Paris of 2006." 'Ilan wanted to make aliyah' Ruth compared Ilan's legacy to an unwritten will. "I am a big believer in peace, and I hope that despite all the problems, peace can be reached. Jews always have hope for peace. We believe in God, a God who protects all the Jews on earth. So how could we not be optimistic-" She has a complex relationship with other bereaved mothers. "I don't have a direct connection with them, but I saw amazing mothers on television, real heroines such as Miriam Peretz. Thank God I have two other children -- Yael (34) and Anne-Laure Rachel (33) -- and three grandchildren. So when I hear about mothers in Israel who lost two or more of their children, I truly appreciate their heroism. As Jews, we are persecuted everywhere in the world, no matter whether we are in Toulouse or in Jerusalem -- our difficulty is the same. So my Ilan is a kind of soldier, just like a soldier in Israel who was killed in a hostile action or in a war, and not only because he was a Jew." Do you feel a greater sense of affiliation with the Jewish people since the incident- "There is one special place for Jews all over the world, and that is the State of Israel. That is the reason I wanted Ilan to be buried in Israel. We buried him in Paris at first, and a year later we brought him to a burial plot in Givat Shaul, in Jerusalem. I hope to make aliyah as quickly as possible. My plan is to spend the rest of my life in Israel. Even if it means flying back and forth to Paris to see my daughters and my grandchildren, I will do that." Yael added, "I love the solidarity on Memorial Day and Independence Day. The feeling that we're all in this together. That could bring us peace." Ruth said that shortly before Ilan died, he had wanted to make aliyah. Yael came to Israel in 2000 and even received an Israeli ID card. She returned to France a few months later, shortly before Ilan was kidnapped. I ask her what she would change if she were given a chance to go back in time. "I don't believe in 'what ifs,'" she said. "What happens is what is supposed to happen. Ilan would have been 32 years old today. I only hope that with the strong army we have and the desire for peace, the wars will stop so that our children and grandchildren will not be murdered. I am not naïve, but I have faith that God protects the Jewish people." After Ilan's murder, she continued, she was "absolutely terrified, like a crazy woman, and many Jews in France felt as I did. The Jewish Agency was flooded with calls from people who wanted to leave the country, and quickly. There was a feeling of helplessness and fear, and we simply didn't know what to do except to want to run away." All of you attended the trial sessions in court, in Paris. Did you feel anger or a desire for revenge, for example, against the young woman who started it all- "Of course I've had moments like that, but I'm angrier with Ilan for having trusted her," Ruth said. "He was a child who trusted many people and would help anyone without hesitation or checking who the person in front of him was. As a mother, I feel guilty over perhaps not having done something that I ought to have done, that I didn't warn him enough. All of us attended the trial every single day to look them in the eye. They were monsters without a drop of remorse. But I'm optimistic -- what's done is done. When you lose your child, you learn a lot about yourself." Time, she said, has helped her deal with some of the pain, "but now, when we're talking about it, or when I go to sleep, I think about him and it's painful. When I meet his friends, that always brings me back to that nightmare. When I see a movie on television that has violence, that always throws me to Ilan. I die over and over, each time anew, and that is not a clich ." The conversation brings other memories back for Ruth. "The moment I arrived at the police station in Paris, I knew that my son would never come back to me alive. I saw photographs of dozens of children who had been kidnapped. I had a kind of flash and said to myself: 'My son is a Jew, and because of that, he's never coming back.' If I could go back in time, I would pay the kidnappers and not listen to the police, and maybe this conversation would never take place."
