“Don’t Release Murderers”

(July 26) – Since Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s return from Washington, rumors are flying about the upcoming release of terrorists, with or without “blood on their hands.”

There have been attempts of redefining who “really” has blood on their hands and who doesn’t; there has been talk of separating “killers” who actually pulled the trigger or stuck in the knife, and those who “merely” aided and abetted.

There have been suggestions of “goodwill” gestures, whereby terrorists tried and sentenced by Israel will be released.

All of these ideas are not new. The same ambassadors of “goodwill” brought up these immoral travesties of justice to the late Yitzhak Rabin, and to prime ministers Shimon Peres, and Binyamin Netanyahu.

On each of those occasions, I spoke to those three prime ministers, and pointed out to them that my son Nahshon’s kidnapper “merely” aided and abetted the three other terrorists who murdered him and were themselves killed in the failed rescue attempt at Bir Naballa, where he was held hostage for six days.

For us, the nightmare of those six days, which shook the entire country, indeed our entire people, as well as people of goodwill everywhere, has never faded.

I sat at the trial of the driver of that cursed car that kidnapped my son, listened to his attorneys and the IDF prosecutors who asked for life imprisonment, and was witness to his sentencing, in a fair and democratic trial. Any reversal of the justice meted out to that monstrous kidnapper of my son would be a mockery of justice, a travesty of law and order, and an act of extreme immorality.

With all due respect to the peace process, and with the true hope and prayer for Barak’s success in bringing true peace to our region, I do not believe that overturning acts that were right and just can lead to peace. All of these values must go hand in hand, and an act of injustice and moral corruption cannot ever further peace.

We must never sell out one value for the sake of another, a principle which I am certain Barak would agree with, as did his predecessors, among them his mentor, Yitzhak Rabin, as did US President Clinton as well, in a private conversation with my husband and myself at our beloved son’s graveside.

May right and justice prevail in our land.

Esther Wachsman, an American trained educator who has lived in Israel for the past thirty years, is the mother of seven Israeli-born sons, one of whom, Nachshon, was kidnapped and later murdered by Arab terrorists in October, 1994.