Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere: A
mother’s plea
FRIMET
ROTH
 |
| Detail from a family portrait: the writer with her daughter Malki, some weeks before the 2001 massacre at the Sbarro restaurant |
One
oppressively hot August morning, my daughter Malki set off with her best friend
Michal to decorate with welcome signs the bedroom of another friend returning
from vacation.
Afterward,
Malki called me to say that she and Michal were heading to the city center.
There she would catch a bus to a summer camp counselors' meeting in another
Jerusalem suburb. "I love you" we told each other – as we usually
ended our conversations. It promised to be a day of giving and sharing like
every day was for Malki.
Thirteen
years later, I still love her and pine for her dreadfully. But now, the only
way for me to express that is to seek justice for her murder.
Because
that same hot August morning another young woman, Ahlam Tamimi, set off on a
very different type of mission. A twenty year old self-described journalism
student, she took two weapons - a 10 kg. bomb and an eager suicide bomber. They
proceeded to the Sbarro pizza restaurant which Tamimi had scouted days earlier. Jewish women and
children frequent
it at lunchtime and Tamimi liked that. As this embodiment
of evil would
later brag, she hungered
for child victims and
the more the better.
Malki
and Michal had detoured from their intended route to eat there too. They were
among the fifteen men, women and children who perished in the explosion.
Today,
Malki and Michal lie buried side by side, while their murderer, who smiled
happily to learn her tally of dead children, is free and thriving
in Jordan. She frequently travels in the Arab world to incite adoring
crowds to follow in her footsteps.
In
my country, my husband and I are not welcome to decry this. Parents of murdered
children are hailed as heroes when they declare that they want the murderer to
go unpunished. Whether for the sake of a prisoner “swap”, to prolong the
negotiations with the PA or, as the cliche goes, “to promote peace”. Waiving
our right to justice is considered the noble, patriotic thing to do.
Our
quest for justice, for a life sentence for Tamimi – there is no capital
punishment here – has invited accusations that we are merely vengeful.
Yet
nothing will convince us that freeing murderers is an acceptable, integral part
of any peace process.
Malki’s
murderer was released in October 2011, the beneficiary of another
terrorists-walk-free deal. Some would say we should have learned to
live with that reality.
Yet,
with each release of terrorist murderers - tried, convicted and unrepentant -
my government thrusts a fresh dagger into my heart and conveys the message
again and again: "Your child was not really murdered.
And your child's killer does not really deserve to be
punished."
True,
my leaders have been subjected to inordinate pressure to free terrorist
murderers from the West, and in particular, from the US. Threats and rewards
have been dangled before prime minister Bibi Netanyahu to elicit from him a
travesty of justice that they themselves would never consider.
We
saw that hypocrisy in sharp relief when terrorists who had not even
been tried yet but were strongly suspected of murders of American soldiers were
recently released from Afghani prisons. The United States government was
outraged. The US embassy criticized the releases as “deeply
regrettable”, a move that could lead to further violence
in Afghanistan. The US military in Afghanistan warned that
“release of these dangerous individuals poses a threat to U.S., Coalition and
Afghan National Security Forces, as well as the Afghan population”.
It
is a tight spot into which our prime minister has been rammed. Still, that is a
lame excuse for releasing murderers imprisoned in Israel. Netanyahu holds the
keys to their cells and the decision to use them is his and his alone. For a
politician who has cast himself as a tough talker, Netanyahu has, in this
instance, chosen the softest route available.
But
it was a carefully-made choice.
He
is a seasoned and savvy politician who knows his constituency well. In both the
left and the right camps, these releases are 'acceptable'. Terrorists are
deemed currency for him to dole out whenever he sees fit.
Unspecified
calculations, secret strategies, and the deepest wisdom have been attributed to
Netanyahu by his supporters to rationalize his odious actions. And so it
has been left predominantly to the victims themselves to take up the fight.
It
has been a fruitless challenge.
Our
prime minister has neither deigned to meet with any of us nor even to respond
to our written pleas, although he did say publicly in 2011 that he had sent all
of us personal letters of explanation. Surprisingly none of those personal
letters ever reached any of us.
The
media have played no small part in pressuring Israel. We have all been
subjected to sob-stories about ex- prisoners who either maintain their
innocence or their rehabilitation to garner favor. Gullible journalists like
the New York Times' Jodi Rudoren are ready willing and able to oblige with
sympathetic pieces. Her most recent specimen, “Remaking a Life After Years in an Israeli Prison”,
was particularly abhorrent.
Where
are the pieces about the terrorists like Ahlam Tamimi who declare “I have no regrets” and who return to
terrorism - as nearly 50% of them do?
Many
families of victims are incensed, pained and fearful of the consequences these
releases entail. Some of us have noted that the conduct of the PA, of its chief
Mahmoud Abbas and of the entire Palestinian people does not justify a gesture
of this sort. They have pointed out that the celebrations and glory that are
lavished on released murderers contradict their claims of a desire for peace
and rejection of terrorism. They remind us of the high rate of recidivism.
But
those are not the strongest arguments.
There
is really only one constant, immutable, irrefutable flaw in these
releases. They are unjust. Plain and simple: undeniably unjust. They isolate one category of murders
from the rest and declare them less significant, less tragic, less criminal,
less intolerable.
Justice,
as we all know, is blind. Or at least it should be. It should be blind to the
race, religion, creed and gender of both the murderer and his victim.
These
releases contravene a basic tenet of any democratic state. It is time for
Netanyahu to regain his moral compass, turn back the clock, and reinstate the
inviolability of Israel’s judiciary.
This
time, Netanyahu needs to show some spine and say ‘no’ to the impending prisoner
release.
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