Israel Matzav

'The mourning of parents for a murdered child never heals or fades'

I was going to hold off until the weekend - Saturday will be the tenth yahrtzeit (anniversary of death) - to talk a bit about the 16 victims of the Sbarro terror bombing here in Jerusalem. But Frimet Roth's heart-rending piece about how the pain never goes away should be read and reread, especially by those who deign to tell the rest of us that it's okay to release 1,000 convicted terrorists in exchange for one Gilad Shalit.

THE MOURNING of parents for a murdered child never heals or fades. Forget the hackneyed jargon: “reaching closure”, “moving on”, “making lemonade from lemons,” “what doesn’t break you only strengthens you,” “celebrate the life rather than the death”, etc., etc.

They just don’t apply.

But in Israel, murder by terrorism engenders unique complications.

We know that Malki’s murderer, Ahlam Tamimi – who planned the attack, and brought the bomb and the bomber to the target she had chosen – may one day return, triumphant, to her home in Ramallah. The act she committed, to which she confessed and of which she was convicted, is somehow not considered barbaric enough to ensure that the 16 life terms to which she was sentenced will stand.

The court’s verdict is in danger of being overturned by a handful of Israeli politicians. Media reports say Hamas demands Tamimi’s freedom, along with hundreds of other terrorists, in a deal to free kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit.

...

The demands of victims’ families are too often dismissed as primitive vengefulness. Our voices carry little weight in negotiations for prisoner releases. The one “concession” made to us is the government’s publicizing of the prisoners’ names 48 hours before they walk free. High Court appeals filed by victims’ families within such time constraints have always failed.

Since the Fogel family murders last March, capital punishment has been suggested as a means of combating the releases of barbaric murderers. I favor life imprisonment with harsh conditions and without parole for Tamimi, who cockily declared in 2006: “I’m not sorry for what I did. I will get out of prison.”

Anything less trivializes the lives of her victims.

Will the knowledge that Malki’s murderer remains behind bars ease the longing to hug my angel again, to caress her silky hair and kiss her soft cheek? No. But her release would intensify my pain immeasurably.

Read the whole thing.

The picture at the top of this post is Malki HY"D (may God avenge her blood). Malki was two years behind my eldest daughter - who was just a couple of hundred meters from Sbarro when it happened - in school.

I will have more about Sbarro and its victims (mentioned mostly without names by Frimet in her article) later in the week.

Labels: Ahlam Tamimi, Gilad Shalit, Malki Roth, Sbarro terror attack

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:46 AM