16-Jun-15: Kay Wilson's revenge

In the BBC's initial report, the reporter [video]
struggles with the claim that the
attackers are allegedly "Arabs" [Source]

A ferocious attack by terror-minded Palestinian Arabs on a pair of defenseless women hiking in the hills near Jerusalem on December 18, 2010 [BBC report here; The Guardian, here] is the prelude to an extraordinary recent talk recorded on video as a TEDx event.

Speaking to an audience in Beer Sheva on the campus of Ben Gurion University of the Negev on May 13, 2015, Kay Wilson passionately and articulately walks her audience through the before, the during and the after of being murdered - and surviving. She shares what it means to witness her friend and companion butchered right beside her, and to identify the killers - who must have thought they had gotten away with their barbarism - and watch them convicted.

There are societies all over the world where a person who undergoes what she did becomes twisted, vicious and bent on revenge. Even if her own website [Let My People Giggle] had been given a different name, it would be clear that hatefulness is not what Kay embodies.

But in a way, standing up in front of audiences, as she now does, and projecting a message of optimism and humanity is an act of revenge.

She describes here as only a survivor can what it means to agonize over what was lost, to celebrate what remains, and above all to embrace life. Though someone has given this video clip a title that includes the words "idiot's guide", it is not at all for idiots. Material dealing with terror and those who engage in it or give it their support is all over the Internet. Actual idiots (we know too many) will not find it hard to locate speeches and video clips that fully address their needs.

Kay Wilson's presentation is literally unforgettable.

From the notes accompanying the YouTube post:

Kay Wilson is a British-born Israeli. She is a jazz pianist, cartoonist, a licensed tour guide and a writer whose articles are published in The Tower, Arutz 7 and the Times of Israel. Kay is also the survivor of a horrific machete attack that occurred in December 2010 while guiding her American friend and client, the late Kristine Luken. The two women were attacked and held at knife point and eventually tied up and then brutally stabbed. Kay watched helplessly as her friend was executed. Despite sustaining horrendous injuries herself, she managed to play dead and later escape. After nearly four years of physical rehabilitation and trauma therapy, Kay began working as an inspirational speaker, speaking for non-profits on issues of human rights for global victims of terrorism and campaigning against hate speech on university campuses. 

Kay Wilson and Arnold Roth met in December 2014 when both participated in a different kind of video testimony [online here, and background here]. And we wrote about her a year before that in a post on our blog ["30-Dec-13: Pretend walls, twisted messages: praising evil, condemning the innocents"]. Kay recounted her experiences to the Jerusalem Post in an interview ["‘What a waste, I’m 46 years old and I’m being murdered’"] published there in January 2011.