Tomer Hazan Hy"d
Tomer Hazan Hy"dCourtesy of the family

Abdullah Amar, father of the terrorist Nadal Amar, condemned the actions of his son and expressed regret that he had killed IDF soldier Tomer Hazan. “I am speaking from the depths of my heart,” he told Israeli reporters Sunday. “If the army would give me a machine gun, I would shoot my son in the head, without a court's permission.”

Hazan was abducted Friday and murdered in Samaria by Amar, with the motive said by IDF officials to be a plan by the terrorist to trade Hazan's body for the freedom of his brother, a Fatah terrorist who has been in jail in Israel for the last ten years. The soldier went missing Friday, and after a Shabak investigation, soldiers descended on the home of Nadal in the village of Bayt Amin, near Kakilya.

Hazan had worked together with Amar at a restaurant in Bat Yam. On Friday, Hazan met Nadal in the Jewish town of Shaare Tikvah in central Samaria, from where both proceeded to Nadal's village, where Israeli officials said that the IDF soldier was killed immediately. Nadal dumped Hazan's body in a pit near the village. He along with six others were arrested Saturday morning, after the Shabak gathered information on the attack.

Nadal Amar had been working in Israel since he was 17, his father said, and the family was extremely upset and distressed at what he had done. “I and all the members of my family, from young to old, strongly condemn what my son did, killing an unarmed man who came here,” said Abdullah Amar. “Nadal never even hurt a cat, I never imagined he could hurt a person. But I wish to tell the Israeli public that if he committed a crime, he must pay for it as a court orders. He killed a man for no reason,” the elder Amar said.

Nadal Amar has been on his own for decades, his father said, coming to visit his family for short periods only once every few months. “He has never been in jail, was never associated with Hamas or Fatah or the Jihad groups.” Nadal Amar has a wife and eight children in the Israeli Arab town of Jaljuliya, the elder Amar said.

He also denied that anyone in the family knew about the terrorist's intentions. “The Israelis think that because he came here we knew all about the attack in advance, but no one knew. I want him and anyone who knew about the plot in advance to be punished, “and to free the others,” he added.

“He is no hero,” Abdullah Amar said of his son. “If he had fought on the battlefield against an armed person and killed him, I would have said he was a hero. But like this? Where is the heroism here? To kill someone unarmed who voluntarily went along with him? If I had known that this was his intention I would have stopped him forcibly, even chopping his head off.

“How did this happen,” the father queried. “Did he go crazy? I, as his father, am struggling to understand.”