Israel Matzav: Terror victim's mother blasts Obama's silence on kidnappings

Sherri Mandell, the mother of terror victim Koby Mandell HY"D (May God Avenge his blood) has blasted President Hussein Obama for his silence on the kidnapping two weeks ago of three Israeli teenagers. I received this by email from Jack W.

Sherri Mandell ~ "Say Something."

I would like to know why President Barack Obama has still failed to publicly condemn the kidnapping of Naftali Frenkel here in Israel, who is both an Israeli and American citizen. Two weeks ago, Naftali, Gilad Shaar and Eyal Yifrach were kidnapped by terrorists on their way home from school. There has not been any word from them since. I would like to know why President Obama and the First Lady don’t say that Naftali and the other two boys are like their children, as they said about the girls who were kidnapped in Nigeria. Michelle Obama said she was outraged and heartbroken about those girls. I would like to know why the President and First Lady have made no public statements at all about our boys, and especially about Naftali, an American citizen.

After my 13 year old son Koby, also an American citizen, was killed by terrorists in 2001, a law was introduced in Congress called the Koby Mandell Act. It later passed as an omnibus rider (my son’s name was erased), which opened an office in the Department of Justice called the Office of Justice for the Victims of Overseas Terrorism (OVT). The office’s mandate was to actively pursue terrorists who murdered Americans abroad.

At about the same time, the government initiated a Rewards for Justice Program to pay for information leading to the arrest of overseas terrorists. Yet, no terrorist killers of Americans in Israel have ever been apprehended under that program. In fact, today when I checked the Rewards for Justice website, there was not even a listing for my son’s name. His murderers have not been found, yet the Justice Department has seemingly deleted him from their consciousness. They are not looking for his killers. In fact, according to their list of atrocities, no Koby Mandell was ever killed in Israel by terrorists. They have closed his case, if it was ever opened. And if you search the Office of Victims of Overseas Terrorism, you will not find his name either, except in reference to the first version of the law.

Yet the Koby Mandell Act promised that the US government would vigorously pursue the killers of American citizens, including those killed in Israel. So far, not one of them has been brought to justice with the help of the American government.

The OVT’s primary responsibilities are to work to ensure that when Americans are injured or killed in terrorist attacks overseas, investigations and prosecution remain a high priority. Another responsibility is to honor and respect the rights of victims and their families. The office is also meant to monitor the investigation and prosecution of terrorist attacks against Americans aboard.

With these lofty goals, you would think that there would be a picture or at least a mention of Naftali on the website. Or a mention of Koby. Or of the many Americans citizens killed by Palestinian terrorists in Israel. But when it comes to Americans who are the victims of Palestinian terrorism, the Justice Department, like the President remains silent.

Please write to the President at whitehouse.gov and demand that he make a statement about Naftali and the other two boys. Ask him why the Office of Justice for Victims of Overseas Terrorism is silent.

Ask the President simply…to say something.

Then again, I think we can do without Michelle holding any stupid signs....

ISRAEL MATZAV; I'm glad my son's murderers have not been found'

What a powerful indictment of the Israeli government's deer-in-the-headlights approach to releasing terrorists. 

Please, Israeli government, I beg you: Don’t go looking for my son’s killers. The ones who cruelly beat Koby and Yosef to death with rocks, the barbarians who attacked two eighth grade boys —  my son and his friend — who were on a hike near our home in Israel. Please don’t find them. Don’t apprehend them and put them in jail and make my family and me sit through a long trial and sentencing, where my heart will quake and my stomach will constrict and I will feel that I am about to faint. 

Don’t find them guilty and put them in jail. Because I don’t want the torture of knowing that these killers will find their way to freedom one day, will be greeted by their mothers with hugs, while my son and Yosef lie in the ground. I could not bear to go through what 26 Israeli families are going through today: betrayal by the government that is supposed to protect them.  

...

As a bereaved mother, it is difficult to speak out. It hurts. Yet a group of bereaved mothers created an organization called Forever Mothers. We visited the Knesset last week to lobby against the prison release. Tali Ben Yishai is a member of our group. Her daughter Ruthie and her son-in-law and three grandchildren, including a three-month-old baby, were murdered when a terrorist broke into their house close to midnight and stabbed them all to death in their beds. It is conceivable that one day their murderer could be released. After all, today the Israeli government is releasing the murderers of Rachel Weiss who along with her three children was killed in a bus bombing. As the bus burned, she tried to get her children off. A soldier who was on the bus, on his way home, David Delerosa, tried to help her but the bus exploded before they could exit. They were burned to death.

Shira Avraham, a member of Forever Mothers, knows what happens when terrorists are released. Her nine-month-old baby Shaked was murdered in her home by a terrorist who had been released in a former deal. He broke into Shira’s home the night of the festive meal of Rosh Hashanah, and murdered her baby and the friend who was holding her.

At our meeting, one of the few Knesset members who attended said, “It’s a disgrace that you bereaved mothers have to come fight for your children. It is the government that should be protecting you.”

He is right. It should not be bereaved families leading this fight. The government should be protecting the most vulnerable families. In addition, every Israeli citizen should be protesting.

Read it all.

Powerful Story of Faith: Seth and Sherri Mandell Coping with the Murder of their son Kobi

Reacting to a Horrible Tragedy

With recent terror in Bulgaria and a massacre in Colorado, we bring you the story of Seth and Sherri Mandel and how they coped with the murder of their eldest son, Koby.

In May of 2001, Seth and Sherri Mandel received the worst news that a parent could hear: their eldest son, Koby, had been cruelly murdered.

Sherri and Seth didn't know how they could possibly continue to live without their child -- nor did they want to.

But in the decade since that horrible tragedy, the Mandells have learned that pain can be channeled into growth, and that while you never go back to being the person you once were, the pain is a springboard to become even greater.

The Mandells founded Camp Koby, a camp for children who've lost a loved one to a terrorist attack, and the Koby Mandell Foundation, helping mothers and widows find solace and support in community.

Here, Mrs. Mandell shares her "five Cs" -- for thriving in the face of tragedy.  "The thing that could help us was [giving] love and creating meaning," she said and noted that "once you can tell your story, it can change."

The talk was delivered at the annual JLI "Land and the Spirit" trip to Israel. For information about JLI's summer experience visit JRetreat.com 

A mother’s pain By SHERRI MANDELL 17/10/2011 Why are we against the exchange that allows murderers to go free? Because we know the suffering that they leave in their wake.

Why is it that terror victims are seemingly the only ones against the prisoner exchange? While other Israelis are rejoicing, we are in despair.

Arnold and Frimet Roth circulated a petition against the release of Ahlam Tamimi, an accomplice in their daughter Malki’s murder at the Sbarro pizza shop.

Tamimi says she is happy that many children were killed in the attack. Meir Schijveschuurder, whose family was massacred in the same attack, filed a petition with the high court and says he is going to leave Israel because of his feelings of betrayal. The parents of Yasmin Karisi feel that the state is dancing in their blood because Khalil Muhammad Abu Ulbah, who murdered their daughter and seven others by running them down with a bus at the Azor junction in 2001, is also on the list to be released. Twenty-six others were wounded in that attack.

Why are so many of us against the exchange that allows murderers and their accomplices to go free? Because we know the suffering that these murderers leave in their wake.


Yes, I want Gilad Schalit released. But not at any price. Not at the price we have experienced.

My son Koby Mandell and his friend Yosef Ish Ran were murdered by terrorists 10 years ago when they were 13 and 14 years old. They had been hiking in the wadi near our home when they were set upon by a Palestinian mob and stoned to death. It was a brutal, vicious murder.

We now run the Koby Mandell Foundation for terror victims’ families. We direct Camp Koby, a 10-day therapeutic sleep away camp for 400 children who have lost loved ones, mostly to terror. We also run mothers’ healing retreats and support groups.

MOST PEOPLE don’t understand the continuing devastation of grief: fathers who die of heart attacks, mothers who get sick with cancer, children who leave school, families whose only child was murdered. We see depression, suicide, symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder. You wouldn’t believe how many victims’ families are still on sleeping pills and anti-anxiety medication. We see the pain that doesn’t diminish with time. We literally see people die of grief.

Bereaved families face acute psychological isolation.

Nobody understands us, they often complain.

They mean that nobody understands the duration or the severity of their pain and longing. In the aftermath of a prisoner exchange, this isolation will only be exacerbated.

So will the feeling that our children’s deaths don’t matter.

When people tell me that my son Koby died for nothing, I always used to say: No, it is our job to make his death mean something.

But now I am not sure. It seems that the government is conspiring to ensure that our loved ones’ deaths were for nothing.

Cheapening our loved ones’ deaths only enhances the pain. If Israel is willing to free our loved ones’ murderers, then the rest of the world can look on and assume that the terrorists are really freedom fighters or militants. If Palestinians were murdering Jews in cold blood without justification, surely the Israeli government wouldn’t release them.

No sane government would.

When we were sitting shiva for Koby, a general in the army told us: “We will bring the killers to justice.” I believed him. I took his words to heart. Today I am thankful my son’s killers have not been found. So are my children. Of course, I don’t want the terrorists to kill again. But if they were to be released in this prisoner exchange, I don’t think I could bear it.

We don’t want other families to be put in our situation.

We don’t want terrorists to be free when our loved ones are six feet underground. Ten years after my son was beaten to death, the pain often feels like a prison. In many ways, I am not free.

We don’t want other terrorists to be emboldened because they know that even if they murder, they may not have to stay in prison. President Shimon Peres says he will pardon but he will not forgive. Terrorist victims’ families will not pardon or forgive the government for this release.

We have been betrayed. To pardon terrorists mocks our love and our pain.

Furthermore, terrorism aims to strike fear in an entire society, to bring a whole populace to its knees. During the intifada, the terrorists did not succeed in defeating Israeli society. But to release prisoners now signals to Hamas that their strategy of terror was correct, effective.

They will celebrate wholeheartedly because they have won.

And as a result of prisoner exchanges, the Israeli justice system can only be seen as a joke, a mockery, even a travesty of justice.

It provides no deterrent and no retribution. It’s as if our government says to the killers: Come hurt us again. We’ll be happy to release you one day. We’ll let you go when you demand it.

I want Gilad Schalit home.

We need to protect our own soldiers. But not with a wholesale prisoner exchange. I wish that I could rejoice with the Schalit family. But I can’t.

The price is too high.

The writer is the mother of Koby Mandell, who was stoned to death near his home in Tekoa in 2001.

‘They won’t understand how the world can continue’ By MELANIE LIDMAN 03/14/2011 01:25 Rabbi Seth Mandell, whose son was murdered by terrorists, talks about grief, the mourning process and why revenge is not the way.

“When they wake up tomorrow, they’ll want to be dead.”

Rabbi Seth Mandell, whose son Koby was stoned to death in a terrorist attack in 2001 while hiking in the wadi behind his home in Tekoa with a friend, knows what it’s like to be the family that’s the subject of tragic headlines.

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“They won’t understand how the world can continue on and how they can continue to be breathing after such a horrendous thing happen,” Mandell said in a conversation withThe Jerusalem Post on Sunday.

“Yet their hearts will continue to beat, their lungs will be able to bring breath into their bodies, but they won’t know what to do, they’ll be completely without resources.”

As the country tries to grapple with senseless violence that killed five members of one family, including an infant, the emotions Mandell experienced in the aftermath of his family’s own tragedy could provide some wisdom and guidance to those struggling with the aftermath.

“The family in the inner circle was not angry, we were too much in pain,” he remembered. “The people who were angry were those who were outside the immediate circle. There are many ways to deal with grief, and much of it depends how close you are to the circle.”

But Mandell warned against retaliatory violence and attacks.

“Throwing stones at Arab houses makes us as bad as the Arabs, and is not an intelligent response,” he said. “There’s plenty of stuff that can be done that is non-violent and makes a point.

“People need to be smart,” he added. “Are they trying to help the family, or are they trying the help themselves, or are they using this as a political football?” In the case of his son’s death, there were no demonstrations, but 10,000 people came to the funeral and thousands visited the family during shiva, the seven-day mourning period, Mandell said.

“That’s a demonstration of love for the family that we will never forget, that this is a tragedy that affected them, too,” he said.

Some 20,000 people attended the Fogel funerals in Givat Shaul on Sunday.

Mandell and his wife, Sherri, started the Koby Mandell Foundation for the families of victims of terror, to provide them with the emotional support to continue living.

They have seen first-hand how terrorism can tear apart a life and a family, and today provide support groups and summer camp opportunities for about 300 families.

Sherri Mandell is also the author of a book about the first year after Koby’s murder, called The Blessings of a Broken Heart.

The first year is just about surviving, said Mandell. He noted that in a traumatic situation, the brain is bathed in chemicals like adrenaline in such an intense manner that it actually changes the chemistry of the brain. Experts maintain that it takes around two years for brain to come back to its “normal” pre-trauma state.

In the days after the tragedy, Mandell said, “they’ll be completely embraced. But after a month or two, people will not forget, but they’ll begin to go on with their own lives.”

This period down the road is the most challenging, as it will take time for the children to fully comprehend the loss.

“The only people they’ll be able to relate to are other people who have gone through these types of tragedies,” he said. “They won’t feel comfortable in their own skin because they’re different from anyone else.”

In the meantime, the process of recovering from the tragedy will be messy and difficult, he said. There’s a tension between trying to find something positive to come out of the tragedy while giving space and time for the reaction to surface.

“What we can do as a society let them know we care and not forget about it,” he said. “But everyone has to heal.

“If you don’t heal your life will be destroyed, and we don’t want these children’s lives to be destroyed like their parents and siblings. We want them to continue with their lives.

This little girl will have to get married, and the other kids are entitled to have a life despite what happened to them.

“They will need to feel that we care and they have a purpose in life,” said Mandell. “That can only be done if you meet the tragedy and not run away from it. That means you have to deal with it so doesn’t destroy your life, and ultimately makes it meaningful… finding something in this horror which will be meaningful and they can take with them.

“If you can’t do that, you will be crushed,” he said.