David Blumenfeld

DATE April 8, 2002 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Laura Blumenfeld discusses her experience corresponding
with the Palestinian terrorist who shot her father
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. My guest Laura Blumenfeld does not have
a prescription for peace in the Middle East, but she has been able to reach a
sort of reconciliation with the Palestinian terrorist who shot her father.
Her father is a rabbi who has also served as the founding executive director
of the New York Holocaust Memorial Commission. In 1986, while on a weeklong
visit to Jerusalem, he was shot by a member of a radical faction of the PLO.

He survived, but Laura's thoughts turned to revenge and she wanted to
understand that reaction, so she functioned in her capacity as a journalist
and traveled around the world investigating how different religions and
cultures deal with retribution. She also tracked down the family of her
father's shooter, but we'll get to that later. Laura Blumenfeld's new book is
called "Revenge: A Story of Hope." She's a staff writer for The Washington
Post. Later, we'll hear from her father.

Laura, can you tell us the story of how your father was shot?

Ms. LAURA BLUMENFELD (Journalist; Author, "Revenge"): Well, the winter of
1986 had been a quiet time in Jerusalem. Tourists walked through the Old City
of Jerusalem without any fear. Then a gang called the Abu Moussa gang, which
is backed by Syria--they're a breakaway faction of the PLO--they actually
mutinied against Yasser Arafat because they felt like he was too moderate.
They come up with this idea that they were going to shoot and kill foreign
tourists as a way to scare people away from the Holy Land. They shot a German
woman on a Holy Land tour and a young British Christian pilgrim. They shot
him point blank in the head. They also fired at an American tourist as he was
walking through the Old City of Jerusalem. That American tourist was my
father.

GROSS: Now your father wasn't killed. The gunman intended to kill him, but
your father survived. How did your father manage to survive?

Ms. BLUMENFELD: Well, the gunman stepped out of an alley and he aimed at my
father's nose actually, he said in his confession. He fired the bullet, but
it just hit him about a tenth of an inch too high and it grazed his scalp.

GROSS: Now you got obsessed with the idea of revenge after this. Why did
that idea take hold of you?

Ms. BLUMENFELD: The shooter was a symbol for me. He didn't only take a shot
at my father, he took a shot at my innocence and my sense of security in the
world. What he did by deliberately targeting civilians didn't begin or end
with my father; it's part of a general terrorist mind-set which said that it's
OK to kill people to make a political point. And I thought about that, and I
was young, but I knew instinctually that's wrong and he's wrong. I'm going to
find that bullet and chase it down and find the person, and try to challenge
that terrorist way of thinking.

GROSS: So you didn't want to, like, kill the terrorist. You didn't want
revenge in that sense. You wanted to change his mind.

Ms. BLUMENFELD: Well, you know, to be perfectly honest, there were two
competing impulses that I wrestled with all the way through. One was that
kind of angry primal urge to grab this guy and shake him and say, `This is my
father. How could you do this?' I wanted to just sort of rattle him. It's
the kind of revenge fantasies that we all may lay in bed at night and think
about and then put away when the sun comes up. But the other impulse seemed
even less realistic. That was that I would find this person and somehow reach
inside of him and shake up his soul, change him from the inside.

GROSS: But your father wasn't interested in revenge.

Ms. BLUMENFELD: That's right. Well, my father felt like his revenge was that
he was going to come back to Israel again and again, and he would live his
life. For him, that was satisfying.

GROSS: You actually went to Ramallah to find the family of the shooter in the
hopes that you could eventually find the shooter, too. How were you able to
find the shooter's family?

Ms. BLUMENFELD: I had a list of people who had been arrested, who'd been
rounded up that spring. And I just went down the list one by one. I actually
started off by going to the mastermind of the gang. I went to their home.
And then Omar Khatib was the second name on the list. And I walked into their
home. I knocked on the door, and a nice woman invited me in and offered me a
glass of orange soda. I sat down on her couch, and the whole family was
sitting around me. And I asked, `Where's Omar?' And they said, `Well, he
tried to kill someone.' And I said, `Who?' And the 12-year-old boy next to
me sort of shrugged and smiled and said, `Some Jew.' And they sort of laughed
about the incident. They talked about, `Oh, it was an American walking
through the marketplace.' And slowly it dawned on me that they were talking
about my father. And they were laughing about my father. They said that Omar
had done this as a public relations effort. I had this image of a press
release coming through a fax machine. And I was trying to reconcile that with
the other picture, which was my father being shot in the head.

GROSS: There was a lot you couldn't tell them about who you were. You didn't
let them know that you were the daughter of the person who was shot. You
didn't even let them know that you were Jewish.

Ms. BLUMENFELD: Right. I said--I introduced myself as Laura. They never
asked for a last name. They knew me as Laura the journalist. The core of my
mission was trying to--I asked myself, `Could I make my father human in the
gunman's eyes?' And I realized that the only way I could do it was by
tricking him. He would come to know me and to like me and my father only if
he didn't know who we were.

GROSS: So what was the excuse for being there that you gave the family?

Ms. BLUMENFELD: I told them I was writing a book about revenge. I told them
that I was interviewing many different families. I was interested in the
story of Omar. How they put it together I never asked. And I dared not to
even imagine.

GROSS: You had this cover of an anonymity. They didn't know what your real
motive was or who you really were. You, however, went there with a lot of
preconceptions about who they were. They were the family of the shooter.
They were the family who was going to justify their son's shooting of your
father. What was your first reaction to seeing them in the flesh, meeting
them as real people?

Ms. BLUMENFELD: I was--my first reaction was fear. I was--as it washed over
me that I was sitting in the living room of the man who tried to kill my
father, looking around at the walls, there were portraits up of one brother
with Abu Jihad, a famous guerrilla leader, another brother with, you know, yet
another Palestinian militant. And they were a hard-core family from the
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. One brother was a member of
Force 17, Yasser Arafat's security guard in Ramallah. Another had been
deported by Israel and then jailed in Jordan for his militancy. And then the
third brother, of course, was Omar, who shot my father.

GROSS: Your way of communicating with the shooter, Omar Khatib, was to try to
reach him through letters. So you asked the family to smuggle your letters
into prison and smuggle out his responses. And they agreed to do that. You
tried to word you letters very carefully so that you could elicit the most
forthcoming and reflective responses from the shooter. What are some of the
things you kept in mind when you were composing your letters to him?

Ms. BLUMENFELD: I tried to be very--I tried to hold back any kind of
judgment. I mean, this was what was interesting about being both the
journalist and avenger, because as a reporter you have to show empathy, you
have to be open-minded and non-judgmental. And, of course, as an avenger,
you're close-minded and self-righteous and damning. So I went into journalist
mode in my letters and just asked him the most basic questions. What was your
life like before prison? What were your hopes and dreams? And by the way,
what happened in the alley in 1986 and why did you do what you did?

GROSS: I'd like you to read an excerpt of the first letter that the shooter,
Omar Khatib, wrote you.

Ms. BLUMENFELD: His first letter was really full of ideological and military
rhetoric. It was very disappointing because there wasn't anything personal in
there. He said to me, `I would like you to know that our choice to the
military struggle is legitimate choice, came on a historical basis that took
into account the fact that the enemy we are facing is one who stands on a
Zionist ideology, which is racist in its basis and Fascist in its aims and
means. It is an enemy based on a huge military destructive machine, high in
its ability than any other superpower state. It's an enemy that can't be
faced and defeated but only by force.'

Then he went on to tell me about the difference between terror and what he was
doing. And it was interesting because as I was reading this passage, I just
walked past the Old City, past the New Gate, where a booby-trapped briefcase
had exploded that morning, blowing off the hand of a Canadian who happened to
be walking by. He said to me, `There's a huge difference, my dear, between
terror and the right of self-determination, between a criminal and a
revolutionary. I've noticed from your linkage between my past as being a
karate teacher and between my choice to violent means of struggle points to a
linkage which is unnecessary.'

GROSS: Now we should say here, I mean, he's--English is not his first
language, so his writing isn't perfectly grammatical. So you really didn't
get what you wanted from this letter. What did you learn from it?

Ms. BLUMENFELD: Well, the first thing that really struck me about this letter
and his early letters were how he described my father when he told me about
these shootings back in 1986. He said, `I targeted chosen military targets.'
And, again, it was this sort of complete discounting of my father as a human
being that got to me. And I just felt like this terrorist has denied my
father his humanity. I'm gonna get revenge. I'm gonna restore that humanity.

GROSS: What's the closest he came in any of his letters to either expressing
any remorse for shooting your father or expressing any empathy for your
father's humanity?

Ms. BLUMENFELD: The first time he mentioned my father's name, he says, `With
concern to David Bloomingfield, I hope he can understand the reasons behind my
act. If I were him, I will. I've thought a lot of meeting him one day. We
have been in a state of war, and now we are passing through a new stage of
historical reconciliation where there's no place for hatred and detestation.
Under this new era and atmosphere, he is welcome to be my guest in Jerusalem.
I hope, Laura, you could be there, too. You believe that God loves us both.'

So when I read that, I thought, `Yes, he's sorry. And he's acknowledged his
wrongdoing and accepted responsibility for his act.' Then I read it to a
friend, who pointed out that he's not sorry. In fact, he's worse than not
sorry because when he says, `I hope he can understand the reasons behind my
act,' he's in a sense saying there's nothing to be sorry about.

GROSS: Right. And that if this era of peace comes to close, he might be back
with the gun again.

Ms. BLUMENFELD: Right.

GROSS: In some of his letters to you, he emphasized, `This isn't personal.
You have to see it as part of our legal military conduct against the
occupation. Occupation knows no justice.' What did it mean to you when
you're saying this isn't personal? This is just about the occupation.

Ms. BLUMENFELD: Well, I kept thinking it is personal. This is my father.
And when you kill anybody, it's personal. And that's the problem. I think
that, you know, that's the problem when people depersonalize their enemy. I
think when you look somebody in the eye it's very hard to shoot them in the
head. And I was trying to get him to look at me or really at my father in the
eye and take a good look and say, `Here we are. Here's our humanity. Do you
still want to kill us?'

GROSS: My guest is journalist Laura Blumenfeld. Her new book is called
"Revenge: A Story of Hope." We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH
AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: My guest is Washington Post reporter Laura Blumenfeld. Her new book
"Revenge: A Story of Hope" is about tracking down the family of Omar Khatib,
the Palestinian terrorist who shot her father. She also started a written
correspondence with Khatib, who's serving time in an Israeli prison.

Omar was having a hearing for an early release on medical grounds because he
had asthma. You went to that hearing. Did you know for sure what your
strategy would be when you got there?

Ms. BLUMENFELD: I didn't really know what I was going to do. I thought that
this was my one chance to meet him and my one chance to confront him. I was
certain I was going to reveal my identity to him, but I was confused. Luckily
my mother came along with me. And I looked at her and I said to her, you
know, `Am I crazy? Am I naive? I don't want to be a fool. I want to believe
he's good. And I want to believe he can reform, because I want the world to
be that way.' And she gave me the courage to do what I finally did in the
end. She sounded sad, but the words she said to me were the most hopeful I
think I'll ever hear. And she said to me, `Laura, that's all we have in
life.' And it was really her faith in the goodness of people that gave me the
courage to do what I ended up doing.

GROSS: What did you end up saying?

Ms. BLUMENFELD: Well, all along my father's one concern was that he never
hurt anybody ever again. And...

GROSS: That Omar Khatib never hurt anyone ever again.

Ms. BLUMENFELD: Right. He said, `I'm not here for revenge. I'm not here for
forgiveness. I just don't want the guy to shoot anyone else again. I want to
make sure that he isn't dangerous.' And he felt like if he was in fact so
sick that being in prison endangered his life that he had no problem with Omar
being released from prison if he had truly repented his crime and paid his
debt. So I--at the last minute, Omar actually passed me a note inside the
courtroom, which didn't say anything interesting or new. But when I turned
over the note, I saw that it was his medical report from the Israeli doctors,
which said that they were recommending that he be released because his asthma
was severe and it was dangerous for him to stay in jail. And getting that
report was important to me because my father had said that, you know, he would
be willing to write a letter on his behalf if he was truly sick. So that gave
me sort of the final push to stand up in court and speak in my father's name
and recommend that Omar be released.

GROSS: On what grounds did you recommend that he be released?

Ms. BLUMENFELD: Well, I had a heck of time even getting the opportunity to
speak because it was a hearing, not a trial. There were no witnesses. So I
ran to the judges first and they sort of flicked me away, and then to the
prosecutor, who wouldn't talk to me, either. The defense attorney--if you
remember, nobody knew who I was. I was just some pesky journalist. And the
defense attorney also told me to sit down and be quiet, and she was busy
trying to defend her client. So I confided in her and I told her who I was.
And she argued with the judges on my behalf to allow me to speak. And they
said, `Well, who is she?' And they said, `She's somebody who knows the family
of the victim and the family of the perpetrator.' And they said, `Well, on
what grounds can we call her up?' And they said--and the defense attorney
said, `Call her up and you'll see.' So they ended up calling me anonymous.
And I stood before the courtroom as a person named anonymous. It was, in
effect, though, the defining moment of my life. I had spent over a year
tracking this family, not acting, just being a reporter, an observer, stepping
back. And this was my moment when I had to act. So what was I going to do?

GROSS: And what did you do?

Ms. BLUMENFELD: Well, I said, `My name is Laura and I come from the United
States. And I don't know all the facts of this case, but I've gotten to know
Omar's family and, through his family, Omar. And I believe that, if he's
truly sick and if he's sorry, that the victim in this case, David Blumenfeld,
would feel comfortable with having him released.'

And the judges just shouted me down and tried to throw me off the stand
because they said, `You have no right to speak. This is classic hearsay.'
The prosecutor was seething and ranting and--you know, `Make her sit down.'
And there was huge arguing back and forth. And I just stood there and kept
arguing back, saying, `I do have a right to speak. Let me finish. I have a
right to speak.' They said, `No, you don't.' `Yes, I do.' And they said,
`Why?' And I said, `Because I'm his daughter. I'm Laura Blumenfeld.' And
for the first time I spoke my last name, and a whoosh went through the
courtroom.

And I could hear crying behind me. It was Omar's family. And I think just
for a few minutes everyone just sat there in shock. And then the judge said
to me, `Well, why did you do this? How did you do this?' And I said, `I
introduced myself as a journalist.' `How long did you keep this up?' And I
said, `For a year.' And then he looked at Omar and said, `Well, when did you
find out who she was?' And he jumped out of his seat and said, `Right now.
Right now. Right now.' He was sort of stamping his feet. He was shocked and
not entirely sure what to make of it.

There was one judge--there was a panel of three judges. One of them had an
American accent. And he said to me, `What motivated you?' And I said, `I
wanted these people to know me not as a Jew, not as the daughter of the
victim, but just as Laura and to see my humanity and recognize that you can't
just kill us. We're people with families, with daughters and wives and sons.
And this isn't some kind of disembodied conflict between symbols.' And the
judge sort of smiled and nodded and said, `I understand.'

GROSS: So you argued on behalf of his release on medical grounds.

Ms. BLUMENFELD: That's right.

GROSS: But he never got the release even though you made a very passionate
plea on his behalf. Why didn't they grant him the parole?

Ms. BLUMENFELD: That's a good question. I'm not sure why they denied his
release. Sometimes there's undisclosed evidence. Maybe he was involved in
other crimes. It could simply be because the political situation changed and
they stopped releasing Palestinian prisoners.

GROSS: The climate has really changed since you were writing this book. In
the past few months things have turned from--well, in the past year, things
have turned away from peace and increasingly toward bloodshed and things are
just at their worst point in many years. Are you in a way happy that he's
still in jail?--because, let's face it, it's very possible if he was released
from jail, if he was healthy enough, that he would become a gunman again,
because it's not like his views of occupation would have changed.

Ms. BLUMENFELD: It's an interesting question. I'm not sure. I recently went
back to Jerusalem. And we weren't allowed to meet. He's still in prison.
But he did talk about what had happened, and he did say that even in the
middle of all this bloodshed that he renounces violence and that he realizes
that there are other ways to make his point and that he's going to try to be
constructive in his actions. I really don't know what he would do if he were
on the outside, though.

GROSS: Right. Do you feel that what he's saying is heartfelt? I mean, I
don't know if you're really in any position to judge.

Ms. BLUMENFELD: Yeah. You know, who knows what lies in his heart. I think
it's a very interesting question. I know the fact that he's willing to say
these things publicly at a time when there's so much pressure to close ranks
and to stand with his people. And he's in prison. You know what kind of
pressure there is in prison if you sort of fink out on your cell mates. It's
not a very comfortable place to be.

GROSS: Laura Blumenfeld is the author of the new book "Revenge: A Story of
Hope." She'll be back in the second half of the show. I'm Terry Gross and
this is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: Coming up, we continue our conversation with journalist Laura
Blumenfeld about corresponding with the terrorist who shot her father. We'll
also talk with her father, Rabbi David Blumenfeld.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross, back with journalist Laura
Blumenfeld. Her new book, "Revenge: A Story of Hope," is about tracking down
the family of Omar Khatib, the Palestinian terrorist who shot her father in
Jerusalem. She also started a written correspondence with Khatib, who is
serving time in an Israeli prison. They achieved a kind of reconciliation.
Blumenfeld is a staff writer for The Washington Post. A little later, we'll
meet her father, Rabbi David Blumenfeld, who survived the attack.

You recently went back to Ramallah with your father. You took him to meet the
family of the man who shot your father, and you were accompanied by cameras
'cause this was being shot for a feature on "Primetime Live." What was that
meeting like?

Ms. BLUMENFELD: I was very nervous and it was certainly surreal because all
around us there was violence, there was shooting and shelling, and things were
heating up rapidly in the West Bank between Israelis and Palestinians. And I
knew that Omar's family was very nervous because their neighbors could see
what they were doing. They were hosting, you know, Jews or outsiders. I was
very nervous because I was worried that my father would somehow be hurt.
There was some tension, and both sides were a little bit awkward, but my
father and Omar's brother are miles apart ideologically--different religions,
different languages, different nationalities, and yet when Omar's brother
started talking about how he missed Omar in prison and he wished he could be
here with them, my father said, `You know what? I have brothers, too, and I
can relate to that because I would do anything for my brother. If my brother
were in jail, whatever it would take.' And so on some level, they were able
to connect.

GROSS: So many of us really want to believe that if just people understood
each other's humanity and had more empathy that terrorism and even war would
never happen. In the Palestinian-Israeli dispute, there have been so many
attempts and so many individuals who have managed to become friends,
Palestinians and Israelis who have become friends, who have become allies, who
have worked together for peace and for some kind of political reconciliation,
and somehow those efforts have never kind of transcended to the larger group.
Do you know what I mean? It has never, kind of, crossed over to a larger
working political reconciliation. I wonder if you've thought about that a
lot about how individuals have managed to make that jump but the larger
cultures as a whole have not.

Ms. BLUMENFELD: Yeah. In fact, Omar's brother addressed that point when we
went back to visit him. He said, `You know, I learned'--first of all, he said
that he was glad that I deceived him, because if I'd introduced myself as
Laura, then he would have been suspicious and closed, and never would have had
the chance to get to know me. But he also said, `I learned an important
lesson from Laura, which is, you can't wait for the politicians, and that we
truly are the seeds of peace.' Again, this is a PFLP member who had been
deported from Israel to Jordan and had been imprisoned in Jordan for his
militancy.

So I think that Americans are trying to answer the question, `How do we fight
terrorism?' And in my own small way, I was trying to answer the question,
`How does an individual respond to terrorism?' What can I do? I don't have
an army, I'm no Stallone, and this was my way. Whether it can work--you know,
whether the grassroots efforts can make their way to the top--I think Rabin
understood that, that when you look your enemy in the eye, you can get things
done. The problem is that Arafat and Sharon are playing out a kind of
unresolved revenge feud from 1982.

GROSS: Are you in despair now about the Middle East?

Ms. BLUMENFELD: It's hard not to despair, but I've sort of seen--I've watched
the tides. I've watched the ebb and flow of peace. And as bad as things look
right now, I know that things are going to get better. They have to, because
I think it's sort of part of the human condition, because ultimately I think
sort of the goodness is going to well up inside of people. I don't know
whether--I think at this point, frankly, the Palestinians and Israelis are in
some kind of death clench. I don't think they can stop themselves, even if
they wanted to. I do think an outside force will have to come in and impose
peace, like you see in revenge tragedies, where toward the end of the play,
when the stage is littered with bodies, somebody often descends onto the
stage, whether it's a prince or a nobleman or a god, and imposes a kind of
peace from the outside.

GROSS: Yeah, and in some of those tragedies, the game's already over 'cause
all the people who were fighting are lying there dead.

Ms. BLUMENFELD: There's usually one person, usually a young person, an
innocent person, who walks into the future and offers the audience a bit of
hope.

GROSS: So that's what you're hoping for.

Ms. BLUMENFELD: I'm counting on it.

GROSS: Do you still have friends who think that you're really naive?

Ms. BLUMENFELD: Yes. I have friends, I have a husband...

GROSS: Yeah. Your husband's a prosecutor, so his job is to work in the legal
system. He thinks you're naive?

Ms. BLUMENFELD: Well, my husband believes in justice, and that's the system
that he believes in. It's sort of the deal that everybody makes with society,
you know. I'll give up vigilante justice, and you take care of me,' and
that's his way. I felt like I needed to do something outside of the justice
system, because I didn't think it would make the point that I was trying to
make.

GROSS: Laura Blumenfeld. She's the author of "Revenge: A Story of Hope."
Coming up, we meet her father, Rabbi David Blumenfeld. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Interview: Rabbi David Blumenfeld talks about being shot while in
Jerusalem
TERRY GROSS, host:

After hearing Laura Blumenfeld tell her story about tracking down the family
of Omar Khatib, the Palestinian terrorist who shot her father, we wanted to
hear from her father. Rabbi David Blumenfeld was shot in Jerusalem in 1986.
He's now the director of the Department of Services to Affiliated
Congregations at the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. From 1983 to
'89, he was the founding executive director of the New York Holocaust Memorial
Commission.

Rabbi Blumenfeld told me he wasn't interested in revenge; he wanted justice,
which he thought was served with the imprisonment of Omar Khatib.
Nevertheless, I asked the rabbi if he had been consumed with anger or hatred.

Rabbi DAVID BLUMENFELD (United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism): No. I try
to, and as I do in my life and as most people try to, try to get past it or,
in common vernacular, you row past it and you get on with your life. The
emotion of revenge is like jealousy. It consumes the person. So that
certainly is not a direction that I wanted to go in. I felt that justice is
being done and I would proceed with my life.

GROSS: Could you describe what happened when you were shot?

Rabbi BLUMENFELD: When I was shot, I was coming actually back from what we
call the Cotel, which is the Western Wall of the ancient temple site, having
prayed there on a Friday evening. I was with the Holocaust Memorial
Commission. The group separated. The rest of the people took a cab back.
And I was walking back, because in the south I do not ride, through the Arab
marketplace.

And when I came to a certain point, I felt a hot, stinging sensation at the
top of my head as if somebody had dropped a firecracker on it. Indeed, it was
a bullet. And I realized it was a bullet immediately when blood was coursing
down my face. And I knew that I was shot, so I called for help. And the
people in front of me and in back of me, everybody froze. Nobody came to my
assistance. And, indeed, the shopkeepers in the marketplace, when I showed
them the blood and called for help, they turned their backs and walked away
from me. And so I'm just describing the scene.

There were one or two or three seconds right there I said, `I'm either going
to die or not die.' I don't want to sound melodramatic, but that's exactly
what I thought. And I said, `I'm still standing, so I'm going to live,' at
which point I felt a surge of strength. And I walked up the stairs--I knew
there was a police station at the top of the stairs--and arrived there and
collapsed on a bench. And immediately thereafter somebody came running in and
said, `We found this gun.' And they showed it to me. It was a Beretta and it
was still hot. And they said, `This is the gun that shot you. The person got
away, but this is the gun.' And then they took me to the hospital.

GROSS: Now the people who were ignoring you, they were Jews or Palestinians?

Rabbi BLUMENFELD: Well, I looked up the street. See, it was kind of
twilight. And I looked up and up the street was a father with a child. So I
have a feeling--and, you know, you can't blame them. You don't want to go
into that situation. He knew that I was shot. He didn't want to come back
with the child and he just froze up there.

Behind me I'm quite certain these were not--these were tourists and not--I
don't believe they were of the Jewish faith. I could tell that they were not
people coming from the Cotel. I could tell that. And they were back further,
and they also just stayed there. But I could understand that, I really could.
These are people who are just frozen to the spot because of the danger.

What really concerned me was that the two shopkeepers just literally turned
their backs and walked away from me. And...

GROSS: Were the shopkeepers who turned their backs on you Israelis or
Palestinians?

Rabbi BLUMENFELD: These were Arabs. That time there was no Palestinian; at
that time they were Arabs and they were Jews. And these were Arab shopkeepers
in the city of Jerusalem, the Old City of Jerusalem.

GROSS: Did you ever see the shooter's face?

Rabbi BLUMENFELD: No, I didn't. Because, as I said, it was twilight, and he
shot me from about 30 or 40 feet away. He stepped out of an alley, shot and
then ran.

Interestingly, I was told later on that the reason why I survived--once again,
I don't want to get melodramatic, but it seems to be a reasonable
explanation--is that I was not wearing a white shirt, because if I was, that's
what they aim--when you step out of alley and shoot at somebody, apparently
you aim for what you could see. The target is usually white and it's usually
a shirt and that's where you hit a person right in the chest.

When he shot at me, I was wearing a blue shirt. But the only thing I had on
was a white skullcap, a white yarmulke. And that's where he shot and that's
why the bullet grazed my head. And so luckily those were the circumstances.

GROSS: As we've heard...

Rabbi BLUMENFELD: Yeah.

GROSS: ...your daughter, Laura, started off with the idea of revenge and
ended up feeling like she could forgive the person who shot you or at least
comprehend him in some way.

Rabbi BLUMENFELD: Well, the word isn't `forgive.' You can't forgive somebody
for trying to kill you.

GROSS: Right.

Rabbi BLUMENFELD: I mean, I don't...

GROSS: What word would you use? I hear what you're saying.

Rabbi BLUMENFELD: I would say I tend to sigh with the person, empathize with
the person as they are at the moment, where they are in light at the moment,
and also understand the humanity. If you get away from the the politics of it
all, there is a dimension which brings us close together, all human beings.

Now the question was: Is he capable of doing it again? That's the big issue
here. So the thing is that when I met the family--I went with Laura to meet
the family...

GROSS: Now this was--What?--a couple of months ago.

Rabbi BLUMENFELD: Yes. No, about a month ago. Not that long ago. And we
were in their home. And, by the way, they were so kind and nice to her. I
mean, they didn't realize that she was my daughter and all of that, that she
was just a reporter looking for information. And it built up a close feeling
between people.

And when I went there, you know, I felt awkward. I was uncertain. You know,
`What am I doing here going into this house?' you know, where the--but the
interesting thing is, you know, the people were very nice and all that, but
his older brother was the one who impressed me the most and really made my
thinking swerve in the direction of what Laura was talking about. And here is
the older brother and the older brother wants his brother to get out of
prison.

Now I know that older brother is not ideologically anything near where I am.
I mean, he is a Palestinian who has certain beliefs and ideologies and all of
that. And I wouldn't agree with some of the things that he is professing,
clearly. But I saw, when we were talking to each other, the humanity of an
older brother or a brother trying to help a brother. I felt through. I mean,
I could see him stammering and emotional, and it just reminded me of my own
brothers. If I was in prison, my brothers would do the same thing. And
suddenly I felt a bond with him.

I mean, I'm with him, you know. I feel for him. And he's with me. He knows
what I went through. So there is this emotional bond where you're both in the
same place. And when you're both in the same place emotionally and you look
in each other's eyes, you give it a chance. You can go the next step, I
think. You can go the next step.

GROSS: Which is what?

Rabbi BLUMENFELD: Which is trusting each other. Well, I certainly felt more
compassionate. I mean, I felt compassionate anyway, but I certainly felt more
compassionate to him and his brother and to Omar being in prison 16 years, a
broken person.

GROSS: Did the feelings of empathy that you think you established with the
family of the man who shot you...

Rabbi BLUMENFELD: Yeah, yes.

GROSS: ...do you think those feelings are surviving or can survive what has
happened in the Middle East in the past couple of weeks?

Rabbi BLUMENFELD: I think so. Look, I don't want to get into the big
politics of it all. I may not have a greater range. I think the next
stage--I mean, this stage has got to be resolved politically or militarily.
Whatever has to happen, we're going to get through this stage. But there has
to be a next stage. There has to be a next stage. And when that stage comes
around, it's the stage where we were at. In other words, the crime or
whatever was committed happened. When we can put those crimes that were
committed and happened in the past, we can then begin to deal with each other
in a total human way and humane way.

If I feel comfortable that that crime was committed, that this black-belt
karate, young guy is no longer the black-belt karate young guy who's going to
shoot people, you know, he's like a broken vessel now at this point, and I
don't think he's--you know, I don't know whether he should get out or not, but
he maybe has to serve the time and that's it. But I know--I mean, in my heart
of hearts I think that he probably wouldn't shoot anybody else; you never can
say. But the point is that already is behind us now.

GROSS: Do you have any faith that either Arafat or Sharon are capable of
getting to that level that you're talking about?

Rabbi BLUMENFELD: I think so. By the way, I think that it's so--we shouldn't
really just--you know, you almost trivialize it. It isn't Arafat and Sharon,
two people fighting each other; I mean, with all due respect to what you're
saying. I mean, of course, they're the leaders, but it's more than Arafat and
Sharon, believe me.

GROSS: Well, let me change my question a little bit.

Rabbi BLUMENFELD: Yeah, yeah.

GROSS: Do you think that the larger cultures of Israel and the Palestinians
could possibly...

Rabbi BLUMENFELD: Absolutely.

GROSS: ...reach the point that you've reached...

Rabbi BLUMENFELD: Yeah.

GROSS: ...as individuals with the family of the shooter?

Rabbi BLUMENFELD: Absolutely. Absolutely. One of my favorite kinds of music
is Arabic, Arab music. I'm crazy about Arab music. My wife and I--Fran and
I, we listen to folk music. We go to folk concerts here in New York. And we
love the Arab music, the sound and the drive.

I lived in Israel a number of years. My daughter, who was in Teerah in a
village helping Israelis and Arabs at that time come together in schools and
education and all of that--my feelings towards the Arabs are very positive.
You have no idea how positive they are. It's just that I think I'd understand
that we're here to stay. You know, we're Jewish, we're here. If that's a
problem, you know, what are we going to do? You know, you have to live.

What I'm really hoping is that we're going to get past all the crimes on both
sides. I mean, you know, there are crimes on both sides. Nobody has clean
hands in this. It's so possible.

You know, there was just the short period of time there when the Arabs and the
Israelis were working together, and I would suggest a few brief months before
all of this happened when the growth, the economy was growing in Israel and
the Arabs--the jobs were there and everything was good. There was such hope.
I'm talking about in the days of Barak. There was so much to look forward to.
I think that was the beginning of what I'm talking about now. We can't--I
wish we could turn the clock back, you know, to that.

So we've got to get over this hurdle here and it's a difficult one, and we'll
get past this.

GROSS: My guest is Rabbi David Blumenfeld. We'll talk more after a break.
This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest, Rabbi David Blumenfeld, was shot in Jerusalem by Omar
Khatib, a member of a radical faction of the PLO. Blumenfeld's daughter,
Laura, has written a new book called "Revenge: A Story of Hope," about
tracking down Khatib's family and starting a written correspondence with
Khatib, who is serving time in an Israeli prison. Rabbi Blumenfeld went with
his daughter to meet the Khatib family a few weeks ago.

Did anyone in the Khatib family actually apologize to you for the shooting or
express their sorrow that you were hurt?

Rabbi BLUMENFELD: No one ever really expressed it, no.

GROSS: Were you expecting that or wanting it?

Rabbi BLUMENFELD: I didn't expect it, to tell you the truth. I mean, just to
walk in there and they're going to tell me that they--I think that they're
ideologically still at a certain place, but I think that they--you know, their
son is in prison; their brother is in prison and they'd like to get him out of
prison, and they believe that maybe, you know, that's not the way to go. But,
you know, I don't really know, to tell you the truth.

GROSS: What are your feelings about the fact that when Laura was researching
the book and first meeting the Khatib family...

Rabbi BLUMENFELD: Right.

GROSS: ...she kind of deceived them? She didn't mention that she was your
daughter. She didn't even mention that she was Jewish.

Rabbi BLUMENFELD: Right.

GROSS: She was accurate in saying that she was a reporter, which she is...

Rabbi BLUMENFELD: Right.

GROSS: ...but she withheld a lot of kind of vital information.

Rabbi BLUMENFELD: Well, let's put it this way: She felt badly about it, I
want you to know, through the whole thing. And I told her that from the
Jewish point of view deceiving somebody is like--`You shalt not steal,' and
it's mentioned two times in the Bible, once, you shouldn't really steal and
you shouldn't do what you call mental theft, where you deceive somebody
mentally and you're saying one thing and you're doing another or you're giving
a picture and you're deceiving the individual. So she knew about how I felt
about that.

But when you think about it in the end, I was ambushed by Omar and she
ambushed him, and that's just what happened. And it was like two ambushes
that went on. But fortunately, nobody got killed here on both sides. But in
order for her to get back at what he had done to me--I mean, his act was a
violent act against me of an ambush, stepping out of the alley and shooting
me, which is hidden; you know, he hid and did that. She was in the same way,
measure for measure, hiding and ambushed him, in a way, through the family.

But still in all, we know that that is not the normal course to go through
life. It's just one of those things. And for her to do that is not her
normal pattern of behavior.

GROSS: Well, Rabbi Blumenfeld, I want to thank you very much for talking with
us.

Rabbi BLUMENFELD: Right. OK.

GROSS: Rabbi David Blumenfeld. His daughter, Laura, is the author of the new
book, "Revenge: A Story of Hope."

Today is the 80th anniversary of the birth of singer Carmen McRae. Let's
listen to a track from her 1961 album paying tribute to Billie Holiday. Since
spring is really here, we'll hear a spring song. There are two basic
varieties of spring songs. In one, spring brings new love; in the other,
spring is just a tragic reminder of lost love. Here's one of the tragic ones.

(Soundbite of music)

Ms. CARMEN McRAE: (Singing) Some other spring I'll try to love. Now I still
cling to faded blossoms, fresh when warm, left crushed and dumb like the love
affair I mourn. Some other spring when twilight falls, will the night bring
another to me? Not your kind, but let me find it's not true that love is
blind. Sunshine's around me, but deep in my heart it's cold as ice. Love,
once you found me, but can that story be told twice? Some other spring, some
other spring will my heart wake, stirring to sing love's magic music. Then
forget the old duet, find love in some other spring.

GROSS: Carmen McRae from her 1961 album, "Carmen McRae Sings Loverman and
Other Billie Holiday Classics."

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.

(Credits)

GROSS: On the next FRESH AIR, the book that may be the only known novel
written by a female fugitive slave. We'll talk with professor and writer
Henry Louis Gates. He bought the manuscript at an auction, has been
authenticating it and has just published it.

I'm Terry Gross. Join us for the next FRESH AIR.
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