Yossi Tzur
Yossi TzurArutz Sheva

Yossi Tzur, who lost his 16-year-old son Assaf in a Hamas-orchestrated bus bombing in Haifa in 2003, reacted to Israeli government policy of releasing the bodies of Islamic murderers for honorable burial:

"It is time for the State to announce openly a government decision that no more bodies of terrorists will be returned and that they will be buried in unmarked graves in unmarked cemeteries as was the case in the past.

"Someone up there in the leadership must understand that it is impossible to continue with the current policy any longer. Not from a security and political point of view, and not from the point of view of the pain it causes to the families of those killed in terror and hostilities.

"Every time the matter comes up again, either in the guise of terrorist release deals, or as goodwill gestures, or as the return of bodies, every few years they kill our children again and again and again; enough, one can not go on like this anymore.

"Enough causing additional pain to families of terror victims whose days are filled with pain and suffering. We just passed through Seder night without the children who were missing at the table, and now comes an article about the return of the bodies of terrorists who murdered our children. One of the subjects of the petition is Mahmud Qawasmeh, the suicide bomber of the no. 37 bus bombing in Haifa in 2003, in which 17 people were killed.

"My son Assaf (Blondi), who was almost 17 years old, was also on the bus. Since then, our lives are not a life. Now we are forced to hear the murderer's father: 'Three years ago Israel returned dozens of bodies of Palestinians, but my son's body was not included with them," Mahmoud 's father, Imran Qawasmeh, is quoted in the petition. 'We are interested in holding a dignified funeral for our son and burying him close to us according to the Islamic religion. It is difficult to lose a dear son, and what makes it more difficult is that there is no grave for our son.'

"These statements are most outrageous against the practical background of the terrorist's mother and the entire family. Immediately after the attack, the Islamic Jihad website reported that the mother had declared that she was proud of her son. The mother of the suicide bomber 'Umm Shadi' ('Mother of the Martyr') boasted about her son's act and refused to follow the mourning custom. The women gathered around Umm Shadi, the mother of Mahmoud Hamdan Qawasmeh, who carried out the suicide bombing on Wednesday in the city of Haifa.

"They came to congratulate her on her son's falling for the sake of Allah ... In the house of Qawasmeh, which is located on the first floor of a building in the Al-Sheikh neighborhood of Hebron, Umm Shadi was served sweetened coffee and a canape'. Umm Shadi did not wear the black mourning clothes and did not serve the bitter coffee served in mourning events.

"She greeted the grieving visitors proudly wearing the image of her son wearing a red kaffiyeh.

"Umm Shadi turned to journalists ... and quoted a verse from the Koran: 'Do not treat those who were killed for the sake of Allah as dead, but as living in Allah and feeding from His hands.' She added: 'My son is a martyr and he is not dead' ... Um Shadi said: 'I am proud of what my son did, we must fight for our religion and not for the sake of the Palestinian state.'

"These hateful, fanatical statements rendered the mother insane; she hates my child more than she loves her son, and we allow her to appeal to the High Court of Justice and we are ready to release the body so that she can continue the campaign of praise she has been waging since the murder of seventeen Israelis, including nine school children.

"The aim of the measures taken by the state, whether house demolitions or revocation of work permits, and measures that the state unfortunately does not adopt, such as the expulsion of families to Gaza, is to deter the next terrorist - not punishment for the families, but deterrence. Let he who goes out to do harm know that his family will suffer and be hurt. Even not returning the body for burial is a legitimate step in deterring the next terrorist, and the father of the murderer has no right to complain to anyone but to his son, whom he raised and raised to be an extremist Islamic murderer.

"The State of Israel after the execution of Eichmann did not return his body but burned and scattered his ashes in the sea.

"The United States threw Bin Laden's body into the sea, in both cases so that the next murderers may know that their family will not receive the body, and will not be able to erect a tomb and a monument in their memory, and that the burial places will not become pilgrimage sites. Unfortunately we know that the PA perpetuates terrorist murderers in squares, schools, and streets, and also incites wildly by turning the worst murderers into heroes, and the State of Israel must act against this incitement in every way.

"And let us not forget that the enemy still has the bodies of our soldiers, Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin, who are held by Hamas. Why should Hamas terrorists like Mahmud Qawasmeh return without the bodies of our soldiers being returned? Do the families of the murdered soldiers have a Palestinian "Supreme Court" to appeal to? Where are the justice and ethics?"