24 Days

Even if we set aside the reality of this film, it’s a compelling police procedural. 

In France a 24-year-old man set up by a honeypot, then kidnapped for ransom,. The family would pay what they can but the police don’t want to encourage further kidnapping. They prevent any publicity, fearing the kidnappers would kill the man once they know they’re involved. The police specialists enforce their strategy. Sometimes the family’s women fall out of line because their emotions are stronger, making them more vulnerable. Our best nature is our weakest; the brutes’ worst is their strength.

The negotiations drag on. The investigation is slowed by concerns for citizens’ privacy and by the absence of clues or any witnesses’ testimony. The police stop the head man for an identity check but have no reason to detain him. That scene probably provokes the indignation of every cinema audience in Western civilization. But we know the guy’s guilt because we saw the movie; the police haven’t so don’t. A possible arrest is bungled by another police division. That ends negotiations. The man is dumped in the countryside and set afire. He’s found near a highway but dies en route to the hospital. He had been brutally tortured for 24 days and not fed for 14. Finally a salesgirl coaxes a woman friend who knew of the operation to turn herself in. The culprits are arrested, convicted and jailed. 

It’s a thrilling suspense story, impeccably performed and produced. It raises the appropriate issues about kidnapping and ransom strategies, the victim family’s interest vs the public’s, the balance between a vigilant police and an intrusive one. Good film.

Then there’s the reality. It raises this genre thriller to a cultural document.

It’s the story of the 1986 abduction, torture and murder of Ilan Halimi by a Parisian Arab gang who targeted Jews because they supposedly have more money. A rabbi admits the community has paid some ransoms in the past, so the stratagem continues.

Still, Ilan was targeted because he was Jewish. His abductors’ antisemitism is clear in his torture. When the mother initially fears the Muslim abductors will repeat the Daniel Pearl story her husband assures her: “This is not Pakistan.” He proves wrong. 

The police refuse to acknowledge it as a race crime so stick to their normal ransom playbook. Because the victim is a Jew the shopgirl ignores the case. She could have saved his life. The race element could have engaged the entire Paris police force, not just the local division. Even after Ilan has been found and his horrible abuse noted, the chief prosecutor denies race was involved. Buckling under pressure the magistrate finally accepts antisemitism but only as an “aggravating” circumstance. A year later the mother has the body exhumed and moved to Jerusalem. His torturers would soon be released and she didn’t want them to find his grave in Paris where they could spit on it.

Clearly the French government wants to avoid any suggestion of a cultural war with Muslim radicals. They’re also embarrassed by the resurgence of French antisemitism, which seems higher now than at any point since the Nazi occupation. Otherwise how could they vote at the UN Security Council in favour of granting the Palestinians unilateral statehood and compelling the Jews to leave Judea, Sumeria and Jerusalem (all of which were clearly part of the promised Jewish state of Palestine), which would expose Jerusalem and Tel Aviv to short-range Hamas rockets. In France Muslim votes far outweigh the Jewish.

This denial of reality is not limited to the French. Ottawa insisted its recent jihadist attacks were just lunatic not terrorist, despite the jihadist rhetoric. North American campuses are rife with antisemitic rhetoric and violence that are excused as political discussion. What US  networks are showing the satiric cartoons that the current Paris slaughter is intended to punish? Muslim terrorists are winning by intimidation.

     When the gang leader is finally arrested in the Ivory Coast and extradited, his last words are “I’ll be back and I’ll kill you all.” The “I’ll be back” may be an angry but idle threat for him. But it’s true for the antisemitic bloodlust that has returned across Europe and North America and encourages the Palestinians to continue their 90-year-old plan to drive the Jews into the sea.