By Ezra HaLevi,
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Murdered and tortured French Jew Ilan Halimi was reburied in Israel on Friday in an emotional ceremony at Jerusalem's Har HaMenuchot cemetery.
Halimi was kidnapped and brutally tortured for three weeks before being murdered on February 13, 2006 by Muslims. His family, acknowledging that Halimi's murderers targeted him due to his being a Jew and because of his relationship with Israel, decided to transfer Halimi's body for burial in Jerusalem.
The move and reburial was facilitated by the Jewish Agency for Israel, which normally handles Jewish immigration from the Diaspora.
Hundreds of mourners, including Halimi's mother Ruth and sisters Yael and Anne-Laure, gathered at the cemetery in Jerusalem's Givat Sha'ul on Friday - the Hebrew anniversary of Ilan's murder. Chief Sephardic Rabbi Shlomo Amar, Absorption Minister Ze'ev Boim, Chief Rabbi of France Yosef Sitruk, French Ambassador Jean-Michel Casa, Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations Vice-Chairman Malcolm Hoenlein and many Jewish immigrants from France attended the ceremony.
"The reburial of Ilan Halimi in Israel is the closing of a Zionist circle," Jewish Agency Chairman Ze'ev Bielski told those gathered. "The family's decision to tie their fate with the State of Israel, especially in such tragic circumstances, is a message clearly felt, one which expresses the unity of the Jewish people. The hideous murder, motivated solely by anti-Semitism, is emblazoned in the heart of the Jewish People, the State of Israel and the Jewish Agency, which has placed as a goal the struggle against this repugnant manifestation of hatred which is raising its ugly head around the world."
Halimi's kidnappers beat, burned and mutilated him during the 24 days they kept him in captivity in an out-of-the-way cellar. The gang contacted Halimi's family with ransom demands, taunting them with anti-Semitic curses and reciting Koranic verses via the phone and e-mail. The kidnappers even sent photos of the bound and blindfolded victim with a gun to his head, in the style of Moslem-taken hostages in Iraq and other areas.
Halimi was finally found on February 13 lying in agony, unclothed and bound, near a railway line outside Paris, with stab wounds and burns over 80% of his body. He died on the way to the hospital.
France's Chief Rabbi Sutrik addressed the concept of being buried in Israel. "We are burying Ilan in Jerusalem because we believe in life on earth, but also in the world to come. Israel should not be a big cemetery, but those who didn't come here during their life on earth can still come here for eternal life."
The French Ambassador said that Halimi's murder was not just an insult to France's Jews, but to France itself, all French people and the entire world.
Ilan's mother, Ruth, said that though she feels like life has been a nightmare, knowing her son is buried in Jerusalem is comforting. She also revealed that there were scores of people living in the building in which Ilan was tortured who did not call the police because he was a Jew. "If they had bothered to call, Ilan might still be alive, but they didn't," she said
A Torah Scroll will be donated to the Western Wall and a forest planted in Halimi's memory by the French Jewish community.
(Photos: Josh Shamsi, Arutz-7 Photojournalist)
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