Some memories live forever …

 

On what would have been Alisa’s 50th birthday, I, her mother, sisters and brother will pause and spend a few minutes looking back.

Doesn’t it seem like yesterday when your first child was born? To me, it does, and decades later, you recall the excitement—more appropriately called nervousness—that had been building as the “due date” approached. Lamaze birth classes are attended, a “go bag” in anticipation of the onset of serious labor is prepared, you might even practice driving to the hospital, the mother-to-be buys a neutral color layette of onesies, blankets, booties and caps because there were no “gender reveal” parties in those days.

During dinner, your wife tells you what the doctor said during that day’s visit: “You’re not there yet. It will be another week before you go into labor.” Two hours later, she announces: “We have to go to the hospital.” You get the go bag and say to yourself, “I hope the Oreo cookies are still in there,” and follow the route to the hospital that you practiced the day before.

When you arrive, a nurse matter-of-factly takes the soon-to-be-mother’s necessary information, and you’re escorted to a drab labor room. The doctor arrives before you even have a chance to check on the Oreos, does an exam and proclaims “any minute now.” Your wife, with your help, is doing her breathing routine through labor pains. A nurse asks if I want to go to the delivery room (in the 1970s that was considered cutting edge), hands me a pair of scrubs to wear and escorts me to the delivery room, where I stand by the side out of the way. The doctor and mother go to work. You hear the first cries of a newborn and the doctor announces: “It’s a girl!” Then she’s whisked off to the nursery. You head to the nursery, where a nurse holds up your daughter, who we would name Alisa, behind the thick glass of the nursey so you can see her and take a photo.

I see Alisa’s birth in my mind’s eye as clearly as another event that took place less than 21 years later. That was when I held her hand after she succumbed to a wound she suffered in a terror attack in 1995. 

Alisa's high school yearbook photo

On what would have been Alisa’s 50th birthday this week, I, her mother, sisters and brother will pause and spend a few minutes looking back.
We’ll remember how Alisa’s life, though brief, left a profound legacy of resilience, compassion and commitment to faith. We’ll recall that at the age of 4, she told her parents that she was not going to the public school around the corner from their home in West Orange, N.J., but to “a Jewish school where Becky,” a fellow student at her nursery school, “is going.” We enrolled her, and Alisa, like the proverbial duck takes to water, took her education to heart.

Alisa developed a love not only of Judaism but the State of Israel. Taking her first trip with an aunt when she was 11, her last trip at the age of 20 was her sixth.

That final trip, which began in December 1994, would allow her to immerse herself in Jewish studies at Nishmat in Jerusalem. It also allowed her to live in an apartment with four young women like herself and gave her the time to run daily, join a gym, and to, in the words of Nishmat’s dean Rabbanit Chana Henkin, “sneak off to daven at the Kotel.”
Looking back, I believe Alisa’s dedication to her faith was a central part of her character and guided many of her life decisions. This dedication illustrates an important lesson: that one’s faith and culture are not mere background details but are essential parts of an individual’s journey towards personal growth. Whenever Alisa and her siblings would return from a trip to Israel, I noticed that they came back not just as better Jews but as better people. With this thought in mind, the Alisa Flatow Memorial Scholarship Fund was created to afford others the opportunity to seek their own roots and to understand their personal values deeply through study in Israel.

Today, almost 30 years after her murder, friends remember Alisa as warm and caring, with an openness and compassion that resonated with everyone she encountered. Known for always having a smile on her face, she had a unique way of making others feel seen and valued.

Her final gift came when her organs were donated following her death. Three lives were saved and, importantly, that act reinvigorated organ donation in Israel, which had become moribund.

With four girls in our family now named after her, Alisa lives on. Each of her nieces and nephews attend or attended “a Jewish school,” and they have been developing their own religious awareness. Watching them grow into upright and proud Jews is a blessing. Today, when a grandchild’s religious observance causes me to shake my head in wonderment as to where that came from, the parents tell me “to blame Alisa,” but it’s all good in the end, and I smile from ear to ear.

Alisa’s short life teaches us that a legacy of empathy, kindness and commitment can spread outward long after a life is cut short. Her story underscores that while we cannot always control our circumstances, we can shape our impact through how we respond to hardship. Alisa’s life and legacy encourage us to think of our own values—and that is quite a meaningful and enduring legacy.

So, happy birthday, Alisa! L’chaim.

Car terrorism in Jerusalem will not stop Israelis from living their lives

I'm leaving for a short trip to Israel in a few short weeks.  What about the Palestinian's new way to attack Israelis, car terrorism?  Will it stop me from going?  No, but I examine this new wave of violence.

What to do about car terrorism

By Stephen M. Flatow/JNS.org

As I prepare for an upcoming visit to Israel, I can’t help but feel a twinge of apprehension. How could it be otherwise? The recent vehicular terrorist attacks in Jerusalem inevitably make every visitor to the city wonder who will be the next victim.

On Oct. 22, a Palestinian terrorist rammed his car into a crowd at a Jerusalem light rail station, murdering two people, one of them a 3-month-old baby. On Nov. 5, another terrorist used his van as a weapon against pedestrians at another light rail station in the Israeli capital, killing one person and wounding more than a dozen others.

The seeming randomness of the attacks is particularly terrifying—exactly as the killers intend. The attacker doesn’t need any bomb-making skills or expertise as a sniper. He doesn’t have to elude security check points or Israeli army patrols. All he has to do is get in his car and step on the gas pedal. He can strike anywhere, any time.

And yet if you walk down any street in Jerusalem this morning, you will see Israelis going about their daily lives as they always do. They don’t seem especially worried. They’re not going to stop taking the train. They know that a crowd at a bus stop or outside a movie theater or on a corner waiting for the green walk signal could be targets too. Life has to go on. Israelis don’t worry because they have no choice. Visitors worry because they do. They can and will soon return to their home countries, where standing on a street corner is not a life-endangering action. That is a difference between the lives of Americans and Israelis that can’t be bridged.

Yet there is another, and very important, difference. The average Israeli can’t do much about Palestinian terrorism. But the average American Jew can.

Israelis have little choice but to rely on the police and the army to continue doing everything possible to preempt the terrorists in their on-going genocidal war against them. American Jews, however, have the ability to take political action that could make a real difference in the fight against Palestinian terrorism.

Let us recognize that “car terrorists” do not simply appear out of nowhere. Abdel Rahman al-Shaludi, who carried out the Oct. 22 attack, had twice served time in prison for terrorist activities. His uncle, Mohiyedine Sharif, was a senior Palestinian terrorist who was killed in an intra-Arab feud in 1998. Ibrahim al-Akari, who perpetrated the Nov. 5 attack, was the brother of Musa al-Akari, who was convicted in the kidnap-murder of an Israeli border policeman and was freed in the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange.

Al-Shaludi and al-Akari are the products of a society, and a culture, in which murdering Jews—whether by bomb, knife, or automobile—is praised and rewarded. Remember “It Takes a Village,” the children’s book by then-U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton? She argued that it is not just the immediate family that influences a child, but also one’s neighbors, culture, and community standards.

What influenced Abdel Rahman al-Shaludi and Ibrahim Akari to become “car terrorists”? One source was the Palestinian Authority’s leadership and social media.

Exhibit A: Sultan al-Einen. He’s a senior adviser to Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas and a member of the Central Committee of Fatah, which is the largest faction of the PLO (the PA’s parent body) and is also chaired by Abbas. He’s not quite the Palestinian equivalent of Valerie Jarrett or (until recently) David Axelrod, but he’s up there.

Palestinian Media Watch has compiled a long list of statements by Einen praising terrorists. But the one that attracted the most attention was his public praise, in May 2013, of a terrorist who stabbed to death an Israeli father of five. Einen said the killer was a “heroic fighter” and called for “blessings to the breast that nursed him.” In response, five members of Congress—Republican Ed Royce (Calif.) and Democrats Eliot Engel (N.Y.), Nita Lowey (N.Y.), Ted Deutch (Fla.), and Brad Sherman (Calif.)—wrote to Abbas, demanding that he fire Einen.

Abbas ignored the letter.

After the car attack by al-Shaludi two weeks ago, Einen publicly hailed him as a “heroic martyr” and charged that Israel “murdered him in cold blood.” Fatah’s Facebook page is replete with cartoons extolling “car terrorism” and urging viewers to “Hit the gas at 199 [km/h] for Al-Aqsa.”

Now is the time for American Jews to ask those five members of Congress to take action—not just another letter that Abbas will ignore, but the imposition of penalties that Abbas cannot ignore. Here’s one idea: from now on, deduct the cost of medical treatment for victims of Palestinian terrorism from the $500-million that the U.S. gives the Palestinian Authority each year. Make them pay for the damage they cause.

There are many other ways in which American Jews, working closely with friends in Congress, can force Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority to stop praising and glorifying terrorists. That would be the first, important step in the process of changing the culture in Palestinian villages that is raising children to become “car terrorists.”