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Dear Secretary of State Kerry:
You have encouraged
the government of Israel to free more than a hundred convicted terrorists,
almost all of them killers, starting this week. We, the undersigned, are
Israelis who lost loved ones to actions like those for which the terrorists
were convicted and sentenced. The decision to free them is a tragic mistake. Justice
and good sense say it should be reversed.
The terrorists, guilty
of acts of savagery, are emerging into freedom proud and erect. Instead of telling
them to go quietly home to make peaceful lives while thanking their lucky
stars, their leaders, principally the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas, exalts
them as heroes. It asks
the world’s nations to do the same. The spilled blood of
innocent Jewish and Arab civilians is offered to the Arab street as proof of
valor and courage. This is a sick perversion of reality.
Since the deal was
first proposed, we have wondered what could have induced Israel’s political leaders
to agree. What caused the author of “Fighting Terrorism: How Democracies Can
Defeat Domestic and International Terrorists”, a best selling book by
Binyamin Netanyahu that tells governments they will win only by refusing to
give in to the terrorists, to betray the core ideas that are said to have guided
his political career?
The arguments against
releasing terrorists are many. In terms of security, terrorists often go
back to terror. This is especially so when their society proclaims their
freedom as vindication for their deeds, as the Abbas PA is doing today. Their
freedom and the celebrations that attend it also serve as a form of incitement
to future terror, as all who wish harm on Israel observe that the Jewish state is
willing to release the murderers of its children for a few moments of positive
media coverage. Some 180 Israelis have been murdered by terrorists who were
released in previous rounds of “goodwill” gestures. Then there is the law.
If courts pronounce sentence on murderers, and the politicians release them
long before those sentences have been served, the judicial system is undermined.
Since law and justice are at the heart of every democratic society, democracy
is endangered. And there is an educational message – a sickening one.
British television’s Channel 4 screened a documentary some years ago called “Inside
the mind of a suicide bomber”. Filmed in an Israeli prison, it shows
interviews with failed bombers and those who planned the massacres. The cold, frank
answers of the killers reinforce our belief that it is madness to allow them back
in the villages and on the roads.
One of them is Majdi
Amro, sentenced to 17 life terms for his part in a Haifa bus bombing that ended
the lives of seventeen people, most of them high school students. He is the
murderer of the teenage children of several signatories to this letter. Amro says
to the camera: “I am not worried! I will not be in jail for long. I will be
out shortly and will go back to killing Jews.” And indeed he walked free
two years ago, despite those multiple life terms. A decision by a previous
Netanyahu government, calculated to secure the freedom of Gilad Shalit, an
Israeli hostage of the Hamas terrorists, ensured that.
Another film produced
inside a prison shows another convicted Palestinian Arab terrorist, Ahlam
Tamimi, sentenced to 16 life terms for murder and terrorism, saying: "I'm
not sorry for what I did. We'll become free from the occupation and then I will
be free from prison.” When it was her turn to be freed in that same Shalit
deal, she said about the people she killed: “I had hoped for a larger toll.”
She murdered the daughters of signatories to this letter too. From her home in Jordan,
she is now a television celebrity throughout the Arabic-speaking world, the object
of open adulation. Her message is: the killings were justified, punishment
in Israeli prisons is temporary and bearable, terrorism works.
The Israeli politicians
of two years ago warned that any return to terror by those released would
result in immediate arrest, re-imprisonment, enforced completion of the
original sentence and so on. They are saying it this week too. But Tamimi’s example
proves that such words are empty.
Something else about
releasing terrorists: the willingness to make huge efforts to get them out of
Israeli prisons tells us much about how Arab society sees them, and the way
they symbolize victory in the fight with Israel. A string of prison breaks
attributed to Al Qaeda in the last month freed hundreds of jailed terrorists
across the Islamic world, showing how imprisoned terrorists are an invaluable
resource. Freeing them justifies serious effort. Yet Israel is handing them over
with nothing tangible in return.
The attempt to rescue a
kidnapped Israeli serviceman, Nachshon Waxman, in 1994 resulted in the deaths
of the hostage and of the commander of the IDF rescue squad. Since then, the
military option appears to have been removed from the table. Israelis have been
told that handing over more and more imprisoned terrorists is the only remaining
alternative. An Israel Today poll asked whether they agreed but the
respondents showed that they see through the falseness of the argument. Nine to
one, they were against setting more Palestinian killers free. When the government’s
decision was taken a few days later, the clear opposition of the people was
ignored.
We are left with many questions
and few answers. The deep pain within us expresses not only our private grief but
the expectation of more unbearable losses in the future that will threaten our
society and grimly enlarge the ranks of those like us – families who have lost
our children, parents, aunts, uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers to
Palestinian murderers.
We are turning to the
government of the United States whose leaders have been instrumental in
extracting from Israel a painful, damaging decision that – even now, before it
is fully carried out – is already
being cheapened by Arab voices.
We say to you, as US
Secretary of State, and to your colleagues in the Obama administration: you
will not find ordinary citizens anywhere, and certainly not in Israel, who are more
convinced of the need for painful compromise and of bilateral concessions in
the pursuit of peace than we are. We have paid an unbearably high price for
this generations-long conflict. We know it must end. But the process of making
it end cannot be built on a foundation of glorifying the bombers of
restaurants and of buses and those who sent them. To think otherwise is to
admit a fatal flaw to the plan to bring an end to the hatred.
Meet with us.
Let us explain why being complicit in turning the killers of our children
and parents into heroes and ‘freedom fighters’ must not be part of any policy
befitting a great nation and moral exemplar like the United States. It is
not too late. We ask you to make time to meet with a small group of us when you
come back to this area in the coming days. We urge you to re-connect with the
human dimension of the process you have started.
Signed on behalf of Bereaved Parents for Peace and Justice (alphabetical by surname)
Signed on behalf of Bereaved Parents for Peace and Justice (alphabetical by surname)
- Moshe Bartov: Son of Frida (a Holocaust survivor) and Alter Britvitz, murdered by terrorists
- Cyril Feinberg: Father of Ian (30), murdered by terrorists
- Estelle Feinberg: Mother of Ian (30), murdered by terrorists
- Estie Firstater: Mother of Smadar (16), murdered by terrorists
- Ron Kehrmann: Father of Tal (18), murdered by terrorists
- Doron Menchel: Father of Danielle (22), murdered by terrorists
- Hagit Mendellevich: Mother of Yuval (13), murdered by terrorists
- Yossi Mendellevich: Father of Yuval (13), murdered by terrorists
- Dr Gila Molcho: Sister of Ian (30), murdered by terrorists
- Shula Oved: Mother of Be’eri (21), murdered by terrorists
- Zamir Oved: Father of Be’eri (21), murdered by terrorists
- Avivah Raziel: Mother of Michal (16), murdered by terrorists
- Arnold Roth: Father of Malki (15), murdered by terrorists
- Frimet Roth: Mother of Malki (15), murdered by terrorists
- Galit Shtayer: Daughter of Ruth and Zeev Almog, sister of Moshik, aunt of Tomer, mother of Asaf, all murdered by terrorists
- Ofer Shtayer: Son-in-law of Ruth and Zeev Almog, brother-in-law of Moshik, uncle of Tomer, father of Asaf, all murdered by terrorists
- Leah Zur: Mother of Asaf (17), murdered by terrorists
- Yossi Zur: Father of Asaf (17), murdered by terrorists
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