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20 years after 7 Israeli schoolgirls were killed, some hail Jordanian shooter as a hero upon his release
It was a scene most Israelis will never forget: Jordan's King Hussein, who just about two years earlier had signed a historic peace deal with Israel, arrived in a peripheral Israeli town to comfort the parents of seven schoolgirls killed by one of his soldiers.Kneeling on the floor beside the grieving family of 13-year-old Adi Malka, the king said, "I feel like I have lost a child, too." He asked them and the six other sets of parents he visited for forgiveness and promised he would seek justice. In the years since, Hussein, then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the other leaders who signed the Israeli-Jordanian peace pact have passed on, and the warm, hopeful ties have given way to a cold peace. And Saturday night, Ahmed Daqamseh, the Jordanian soldier responsible for the 1997 killing of the Israeli schoolgirls, was released from jail. He had served 20 years. should've "served" the time it takes a bullet to leave the barrel "We knew he would be released sometime soon, but it still hurts," Hila Levy, who was injured in the attack on March 13, 1997, told Israel Army Radio on Sunday. She had been with her classmates on a field trip at the border site known as Naharayim ‐ the "Island of Peace" ‐ when they were attacked. "I really admired the king for coming here, but he promised that this man would get the punishment he deserved," said Levy, now 33. "A man like that does not deserve to be free." In Jordan, supporters of Daqamseh, whom the Jordan military court deemed mentally unstable at the time, hailed his release and called him a hero. He was released overnight Saturday, Jordanian authorities said, to forestall large celebrations and a hero's welcome. But hundreds of relatives and supporters greeted Daqamseh at his family home in the northern village of Ibdir, 60 miles north of Amman, the Jordanian capital. In his first statement after leaving prison, Daqamseh said, "I entered prison a soldier of the armed forces and today I consider myself a member of the armed forces." "Don't believe the lie of normalization with the Zionist entity. Don't believe the lie of the two-state solution; Palestine united is from the ocean to the river … there is no state called ‘Israel,'" he later said in an interview with Al Jazeera. yeah, he's "rehabilitated". Shin Bet should kill him Posted by: Frank G 2017-03-12 |
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