Bereaved families yelled at Israel PM Netanyahu: ‘You’re freeing our children’s killers’

 

Israel’s annual Memorial service held at Mount Herzl disrupted when families of victims of terrorist attacks start yelling at Israel’s Prime Minister.

Netanyahu responds: ‘Today, the waves of hate of our enemies shatter at the defensive shield, the iron wall of the IDF.’

By Omri Efraim

 

The memorial service for Victims of Terror Acts was disrupted Monday afternoon when bereaved families prevented Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of starting his speech by yelling at him and waving red flags.

Rami Cohen, who was wounded in a terror attack in 2000, got up from his seat and called at Netanyahu: “Mister Prime Minister, you are freeing the murderers of our children!”

“No one is paying attention to us, no one hears us. I’ve been sitting at home for the past 14 years and can’t function. Terrorists are being releases every other day and I can’t take it anymore. I haven’t had a happy day in 14 years,” Cohen told reporters after the ceremony.

Cohen, who was a taxi driver, said he was stabbed 14 times by a terrorist who got into his cab on December 20, 2000.

“After he cut me all over he got 22 years imprisonment. That’s a joke. I was at all of the court hearings and the terrorist was smiling, he must know something I don’t know – that terrorists will be released.”

When he was allowed to speak, the prime minister said that “the terror acts against us have been going on for nearly 100 years. They’ve increased durin the 1936–39 Arab revolt, during which hundreds of the Jewish settlement were murdered. Today, almost 80 years afterwards, those waves of hate of our enemies who have yet to accept our right to exist are shattered at the defensive shield, the iron wall of the IDF and the other security forces.”

Netanyahu added that “our ongoing war for survival has cost and still does many victims, and many names are etched on the wall behind me – innocent civilians, Jews and not Jews, men and women, from babes to white of hair – who fell victims to terror and hatred organizations.”

“Dear family members, today we remember our beloved, whose lives were severed and whose story is an inseparable part of the revival of the nation of Israel in its country,” he added.

On the matter of the release of terrorist prisoners, Netanyahu said that “the decision that has been made was difficult, it goes against the value of justice – everyone feels this way. The complicated reality in our region has created a situation in which, for the last four decades, the governments of Israel had to make decisions that were hard to bear – over and over again. I know I will meet you here, but I viewed it as my responsibility as the prime minister of Israel. I salute your bravery and resistance.”

Aeybi Moses, whose wife Ofra and son Tal were killed in a 1987 terrorist attack, spoke on behalf of the families of terror victims

 

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View original Ynet publication at: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4516580,00.html