Israeli victims of terror send a plea to Sec. Kerry

The victims of terrorist attacks and families of terrorism victims have asked to meet with Secretary of State John Kerry. Members of Almagor terror victims association presented this letter to U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro.

We heard today about Secretary Kerry’s arrival to Israel in an attempt to salvage the negotiations we said back in the summer will fail.

The only negotiations that have a chance to succeed are those done in true willingness and not those made with (the) bribes of release of terrorists. Something built on (such) wrong foundations (doesn’t) have a chance of staying standing up.

From where we are, after the three waves of releases that brought us nothing except more terror, more dead Israelis, we see yet another attempt to coerce the Israeli government into releasing more terrorists.

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. We are now turning to you for your personal intervention, and for the help of your office. We ask you again to set us up for a meeting with Secretary Kerry on his current visit to Israel.

You promised to do your best to set such meeting, both to us in our meeting in Haifa and to Almagor chairman Meir Indor who met you in the Knesset recently.

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.

Since the deal was first proposed, we 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?

Now after nine months and zero results we see another attempt to resuscitate a dead process, dead negotiations, and again (at) the expense of the bereaved Israeli families.

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 (a) few 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.

I urge you to see a short clip of the movie I placed on You Tube — http://bit.ly/1pRqn5c

This short clip will turn your stomach, especially knowing that those two were released and are now working to generate terror attacks against Israel.

We asked to meet with Secretary Kerry. We requested the opportunity to 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 U.S.

We asked Secretary Kerry to make time to meet with a small group of us when he comes back to this area in the coming days. We asked him to re-connect with the human dimension of the process he started.

Now that the secretary is here again in such a critical time of the process, we renew our request and strongly ask that it will be considered in favor.

Signed by:

Yossi Zur, Haifa‬

Ron Kehrmann, Haifa‬

Yossi Mendelevich, Tel Aviv‬

Ofer Shteir, Haifa‬

Doron Menchel, Haifa‬

Gila Molcho, Haifa‬

Oren Tamam, Tel Aviv‬

Meir Indor, Chairman of Almagor, Israeli organization for terror victims‬