May 10, 2002
Nativity Terrorists Murdered Americans
Question: What’s scarier than having your young son stoned to death?
Answer: Having your President negotiate for his murderers’ freedom.
That’s the insult added to injury that the families of three American citizens experienced, Thursday, as 26 Palestinian terrorists were led to freedom from their captivity inside the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.
One of those families was the American Mandell family. American citizen Koby Mandell was barely thirteen years old, a year ago, when he and his friend Yosef Ish-Ran, also thirteen, were stoned to death in a cave in what was supposed to be a friendly hike in the hills for two young boys.
In Judaism, thirteen is the age of Bar Mitzvah—becoming a man. Barely men, these two young kids were tortured for almost two hours by Mahmoud Hamdan--one of the terrorists holed up, until Thursday, in Jesus’ church. Koby and Yosef will never get to experience manhood, unlike the cowardly scum who murdered them and are now roaming free, thanks to President Bush.
When Israeli authorities found Mandell’s and Ish-Ran’s bodies, they were so badly smashed and bloodied against the walls of the cave that they were identifiable only through dental records. The entire cave was red, as these terrorist murderers smeared anti-Semitic graffiti all over the walls with the two young boys’ blood. This was a cave formed by centuries of rainwater and the carvings of 6th Century monks who made it a place of prayer and holiness.
Now it is a holy grave of two peaceful, innocent young boys.
Imagine being the mother of Mandell, a cute, vivacious all-American kid, last photographed wearing the baseball hat of his favorite team—the New York Yankees. Imagine having to identify—and forever remember the image of—the lifeless, smashed skeleton and organs of what was once that smiling son in a Yankees hat.
Now imagine your President—George W. Bush—negotiating your son’s depraved, inhuman killers’ freedom—freedom that your son will never again have.
If you are American Sherri Mandell, from Silver Spring, Maryland, you do not have to imagine this. It is the nightmare that will never end. Jewish law dictates that the anniversary of a person’s death is his or her “yahrtzeit.” A special candle is lit to commemorate the death and remember the departed. Mrs. Mandell has barely completed a year of painful mourning for her dead, adorable, peaceful son who never hurt anyone. Now, she must experience this pain all over again, because she must mourn the death of common sense and justice in her and our President.
While Sherri Mandell was lighting the yahrtzeit candle for her son, President Bush was partying with the Saudi Crown Prince, Abdullah, who sponsors terrorists like the ones who killed her son. While she was visiting the grave of her forever-13 son, President Bush was bowing to Abdullah’s threat that America will face “grave consequences” if it does not change its position toward Mrs. Mandell’s American son’s murderers. And while she was trying to remember the cute American son that once was--rather than the gruesome pile of bones, guts, tissue, and blood into which he was transformed--President Bush pressured Israel into giving Sherri Mandell’s child’s murderers their freedom—all to appease the rotund, brazen Saudi royal.
Our Commander-in-Chief negotiating the freedom of killers of our citizens is nauseating. So much for being the Chief Executive enforcer of laws. I guess he forgot about those laws against murder.
Then there are Avi Boaz and Sara Blaustein—also Americans, also murdered in cold blood by the terrorists President Bush helped set free from the Church of the Nativity. Never to be brought to trial, never to face justice.
Ibrahim Moussa Salem Abayat and Ismail Hamdan, both freed from the Church and prominent members of Arafat’s Fatah Tanzim, were involved in numerous terrorist attacks, including the murder of 72-year-old Boaz. Boaz, a building contractor, had close personal relationships with many Palestinian Arabs and traveled to Bethlehem on the morning of January 15, 2002, on business. As he entered the city, he was stopped at a Palestinian Authority roadblock, where he showed the PA policemen his U.S. passport. The PA police then allowed Fatah terrorists to abduct him to Beit Sahur, where they murdered him.
American citizen Sara Blaustein, of Lawrence, New York, was murdered in a drive-by shooting by Abayat, now freed from the Church of the Nativity. At Blaustein’s funeral, her family dealt with the outrage that the U.S. Embassy refused to send a representative, in order not to make "a political statement." Yet, its Consul-General, Ed Abington (later paid millions as Arafat’s Washington lobbyist) routinely attended funerals of Palestinians who, unlike Blaustein, weren’t even Americans.
These American citizens did not die in vain. Their relatives are promoting legislation, the Koby Mandell Act, to create a Justice Department office to pursue Palestinian Arab terrorists who kill or injure Americans and bring them to trial in the U.S.
But, legislation or not, President Bush should be demanding the extradition of these murderers of Americans to the U.S. to face justice—not negotiating for their freedom.
This is a great idea! I hope it passes into law. President Bush should be ashamed of himself for allowing these murderers to go free.