Mother of Murdered Soldier Questions the Release of Palestinian Terrorists

The release of Palestinian terrorists would be “an obscenity” said Esther Wachsman, the mother of Cpl Nachshon Wachson who five years ago was kidnapped, held hostage and murdered by Palestinian terrorists.

Speaking independently to a packed hall at Beit Agron, Jerusalem, Wachsman declared that it was her moral duty as a bereaved mother and a citizen to speak out for justice and morality. It would be a travesty of justice, she said, to see the sentences of killers and their accomplices overturned.

“Our children killed after Oslo are not victims of peace, they are victims of terror – victims of evil” – she said.”Peace does not have victims.” The daughter of Holocaust survivors, Wachsman said that it was inconceivable at this date “that we are hunting Nazis and releasing terrorists.”

The people who carried out the illegal instructions issued by (then PLO chairman) Yasser Arafat, were like Nazis obeying instructions, and like Nazis also punishable, Wachsman noted.

Mohamed Deif who masterminded her son’s kidnapping is alive and well and free she said, recalling that three years ago, US President Bill Clinton had sworn at Nachshon’s gaveside on Mount Herzl in the presence of Shimon Peres and then US ambassador Martin Indyk that he would not go forward with the peace process until Mohamed Deif had been apprehended and sentenced.

The head of the Gaza Police Force in a meeting with Yehuda Wachsman, Nachshon’s father, had admitted that he knew where Deif was and said that he could arrest him at any time, but was prevented by Arafat from doing so.

Like all his predecessors, Prime Minister Ehud Barak has said that he will not release any Palestininan prisoner who has killed an Israeli or anyone from Hamas. Esther Wachsman received a message to this effect on Sunday from Barak’s bureau chief Danny Yatom.

Wachsman said that she did not have too much confidence in that promise being kept.

“We have been lulled into a situation where we’re tired. We want peace and I’m afraid that we want it at any price,” she said.