...In contrast to Parents Circle’s message, most of the bereaved Israelis we know (unfortunately we know many) passionately reject the immoral equivalence the group’s activists imply between the victims and the terrorists.
Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
12 July '13..
The conflict between Israel, on one hand, and the Palestinian Arabs and the Arab states, on the other, has exacted a terrible price from ordinary people on both sides of the divide. Since the signing of the 1993 Oslo peace declaration until today, some 1,650 Israelis were killed in terror attacks by Palestinian Arab groups; several times that number have been injured. Add to this the 22,000 soldiers killed in all the wars and the circle grows exponentially. Tiny Israel, with its population of 7 million, carries an extraordinary burden of pain.
We, the writers of this blog, became a part of the circle of tragedy and grieving when, on August 9, 2001, the life of our fifteen year-old daughter Malki was stolen from her and from us by murder-minded Hamas terrorists in a devastating attack on a restaurant filled with children in the heart of Jerusalem on a hot school-vacation afternoon.
Some, among Israel’s victims of terror, mourn privately and keep their distance from public controversy. Others speak up or join advocacy groups that reflect wide ranging views. In Israel’s robust democracy, we have both the expectation and the inalienable right to do this.
Against that background, we have viewed the activities of Parents Circle from a distance (see for instance "The sin of forgiveness fervor") for more than a decade. It arouses deep disquiet within us. What follows here is an expression of those feelings. As always, we speak only for ourselves; we claim no right of representing others. Some feel differently. But from many conversations with families like our own, we know the sense we reflect here is widely held.
Parents Circle was created in the nineties and claims to speak for five or six hundred bereaved Israeli or Palestinian members. It’s an unverified number that – curiously – has remained constant throughout the past decade. We think this is odd: thousands of acts of terrorism have produced thousands more terror victims on the Israel side (alone). Yet the membership number they publicize has remained static in all that time.
(Continued)
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