Never forgive, never forget. »I accompanied the family in the plane to Ilan’s reburiaĺ outside Jerusalem ».

BRETT KLINE. EXCLUSIVE. Today is the 19th anniversary of the death of Ilan Halimi, age 23, from a modest sephardi family, working in a telephone store, kidnapped for ransom by the gang des barbares and tortured for three weeks in a sound- proof basement in a nice high-rise building in Bagneux south of Paris.

I wrote 4-5 articles on his kidnapping and the failure of the French police to find him and his assailants while he was alive. I spent a day with his mother in mourning. She told me this never would have happened in her native Morocco.

I accompanied the family in the plane to Ilan’s reburiaĺ outside Jerusalem. An American Jewish official there said he died a hero, a martyr for the Jewish people. He was dead wrong. Ilan died for nothing.

 And in a cover story for the JPost magazine, I covered the last day of the triaĺ here in Paris in 2009, what the prosecutor called « au delà-beyond-de l’antisémitisme normal ».

I have no idea where the family is today. I can only offer a moment of silence and reflection for Ilan and for them.

Never forgive, never forget.

Zikhrono livracha, blessed be his memory.

Thank you all.