Robi Damelin - Cont'd

On October 30th I blogged about a sign of weakness in Israel's society: Robi Damelin.

Well, she's off on a lecture tour sponsored by another weak-link, Yitzhak Frankenthal. With one "Ali Abu Awwad, a West Bank former revolutionary".

You can read the report here, and the sole reference to her son's murderer is this:

...tonight he hugs Robi as he says it. Not because they have established a mother-son relationship — that is too simplistic, they insist. But after five years he knows how much she is hurting merely uttering the name Taer. Robi insists that she will, urged on by her older son Eran, go on writing and explaining about David to her son’s killer in prison. “Perhaps this is the beginning of a new dialogue. I am not going to let this turn me into a victim,” she says.

Now, why should she be hurt? And why should you consider Robi a bit weird when she obliquely mentions 'the beginning of a new dialogue'?

Well, you have to read Taer's letter to her.

Here's an excerpt from my previous blog post:

In March 2002, Ta'er Hamad positioned himself with an old carbine rifle on a hill opposite a checkpoint in Wadi Haramiya, killed eight Israeli soldiers and two Israeli civilians - and escaped unscathed. [I pass that spot twice daily and my neighbor Avigdor Schatz was wounded trying to extricate those caught up in the ambush] Two and a half years later, in October 2004, he was arrested by an Israel Defense Forces unit operating in his village of Silwad. After learning of his incarceration, Damelin decided to contact him and his family, seeking reconciliation.

So, what was Hamad's response?

"I recently learned of the contents of a letter by Robi Damelin, mother of the soldier David, who was one of the 10 soldiers of occupation who were killed in the operation for which I was sentenced to 11 life terms," Hamad wrote. "I cannot address the soldier's mother directly. Not because it is difficult for me to convey my response from prison, but because my hand refuses to write in a style that epitomizes the policy of the occupation, that refuses to recognize and to accept the rights of our people. I cannot hold a dialogue with someone who insists on equating the criminal and the victim, and on equating the occupation with its victims. This is my response to the letter of Mrs. Robi, and I hereby criticize her sarcastic style when she thinks that with emotional words it is possible to resolve this decades-old conflict."

Hamad bluntly rejected the bereaved mother's outstretched hand. "Mrs. Robi did not explain what led the soldier David to enlist," he continues. "She doesn't know the iron fact that her son not only took part in the torture of my people, but stood at the head of the perpetrators of the killing and murder. From her letter, it appears that she is living on another planet. She forgets that the late Abu Amar (Yasser Arafat) called for peace 35 years ago. I wish to remind the mother of the soldier David that history proves that a people that does not fight an occupation with all means, including arms, cannot obtain its rights. This is the lesson that must be taken from looking at your ally the Americans who were humiliated in Vietnam and this is the lesson of your army's withdrawal from Lebanon. You must remove your hands from our land and from our people, and if not, it is our duty to kill the murderers.

"Mrs. Robi says that she joined the Palestinian and Israeli parents' organization for peace, after the death of her son," Hamad added. "This is an organization of parents who lost their children in the arena of the conflict, while she, Robi, is determined to equate our martyrs with their casualties, likening those who are fighting for their rights with the occupiers. Just as I refused to directly address the soldier's mother, I cannot wish to meet her. I cannot meet with the occupier of our land on the same land. I carried out the operation as part of the struggle for freedom, justice and the establishment of an independent state, not out of a lust or love for killing. Acts of violence are a necessity imposed upon us by the occupation and I shall not abandon this path for as long as the occupation continues."...

..."When I told Eran [her oldest son] that I received a letter from the sniper, I expected him to say, 'For god's sake, Mom, let this thing go.' But he said something very beautiful. He said, 'Mom, this is also the beginning of a dialogue.'"

So, this is... dialogue?

Maybe.

But of the deaf...and dumb.

For Robi's sake, I hope she at least occasionally informs her audiences the full truth, the whole
truth and nothing but the truth.

We need the truth in this conflict and so far, despite all the sugary characterizations, Robi is not helping out.