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BornUnderDioscuri
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posted January 12, 2007 10:19 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for BornUnderDioscuri     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Her father's keeper

Laura Blumenfeld, author of "Revenge: A Story of Hope," talks about tracking down the Palestinian who shot her father.
http://dir.salon.com/story/books/feature/2002/04/05/vengeance/index.html?pn=1

April 5, 2002 | In 1986, David Blumenfeld was shot by a Palestinian terrorist in the Old City of Jerusalem. The bullet missed his brain by half an inch. Blumenfeld, an American rabbi who was visiting Israel to plan a new Holocaust museum in New York, survived the attack, recovered and returned home to his family. His daughter, Laura, then a student at Harvard, wrote a poem for an English class, the last line swearing revenge for her father's suffering: "This hand will find you/ I am his daughter."

In the years that followed, Laura Blumenfeld, who was raised to be sympathetic to the Palestinians' plight, worked abroad with Palestinian and Israeli kids, got a master's degree in international affairs and became a staff writer at the Washington Post. She fell in love with her childhood crush and married him. She was looking forward to having a baby.

But her poem was more than an outlet for fear, despair and youthful rage. It was a promise. During her newlywed year, Blumenfeld returned to the Middle East to find the man who shot her father. Twelve years after the shooting, she still wanted revenge -- a strange kind of revenge not easy to distinguish from forgiveness.

She wanted to shake the shooter by the collar. She wanted him to know that "you can't **** with the Blumenfelds." She wanted some acknowledgement from the shooter of the wrong he had committed, of her father's humanity, his suffering and her family's powerlessness to prevent it. And she wanted "to see what we had in common." In "Revenge: A Story of Hope," a book that is alternately investigative and delicately personal, comical and gravely riveting, Blumenfeld recounts her year in Jerusalem and the West Bank in pursuit of her father's assailant, and the remarkable events that ensued after she met him. The terrorist, Omar Khatib, a member of a Syria-backed radical faction of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, was locked up in an Israeli jail for his crime. The only way Blumenfeld could contact him was by sneaking letters through his family.

Introducing herself to the Khatib clan as simply "Laura," a journalist writing about revenge, Blumenfeld began a relationship with the family, one that blossomed into a warm friendship that involved numerous visits to their house in Kalandia near Ramallah in the West Bank, mutual favors and lots of hot tea. When she first met them and they mentioned "some Jew" that their son had shot, the Khatibs laughed.

In light of the violence engulfing the Middle East right now, it would not have been surprising if Blumenfeld had simply wanted to repay harm with harm -- or if she had wanted to do so for religious or political reasons. The Blumenfelds are Jewish and Omar Khatib is Palestinian; the Jewish state and the Palestinians are locked in a bitter, bloody war. But one of the most striking and significant things about "Revenge" is that Blumenfeld's quest had nothing to do with politics. Blumenfeld's own politics are clearly dovish: In a letter she sends to Omar, Blumenfeld writes, "[My father] supports and likes the Palestinians. He taught this to his children ... this is what he said: He thinks you have been wronged by Israel in your life. He believes you went through hell, as did your brother, Imad, and your parents ... He respects your ideology and does not want to argue politics."

To Blumenfeld, then, it wasn't a "Palestinian terrorist" who shot her Jewish father -- it was a human being who shot her "daddy." Her longing to take revenge -- if you can call it that -- was not as a Jew, but as a daughter. It's obvious how important this idea is to Blumenfeld; a good chunk of the book describes her relationship with her divorced parents and the painful fracturing of her family. In her exploration of revenge, Blumenfeld delivers a rich portrait of a thoughtful, conflicted and curious avenger.

In the course of the book, Blumenfeld meets Sicilians, Albanians and a grand ayatollah in Iran in an effort to learn about different forms of revenge. But one never quite believes that Blumenfeld, a mild-natured and seemingly content young newlywed, ever wants to actually harm the man who tried to kill her father. Blumenfeld frames her cross-cultural exploration of revenge as part of her personal quest, as if she were trying to make up her mind which type to choose. This isn't convincing: the passages about other cultures' vengeful acts, both monetary and bloody, are illuminating and interesting, but they don't seem to play much of a role in Blumenfeld's personal odyssey.

Indeed, it's debatable whether what Blumenfeld achieves actually constitutes revenge at all. She argues that there are many different types, of which she chooses "constructive revenge." (Note: Those who don't want to know how the book ends should skip the next two paragraphs.) In the book's dramatic finale, during Omar's appeal to be released from prison on the basis of a deteriorating medical condition, Laura stands up in court and reveals her identity -- to the gasps and cries of Omar and his family (as well as the perplexed Israeli judges). She declares that he promised to never hurt anyone again and says that she and her father believe he should be released. Shortly after, Omar apologizes and swears to forgo violence. Is this "revenge"?

Blumenfeld's quest is both morally complex and dauntingly ambitious. When Blumenfeld and Omar begin to exchange letters as journalist and subject, she encounters an unyielding, impersonal ideological wall. "If you saw [David Blumenfeld] today, or met his friends/family, what would you like to tell them?" Laura writes. "I've told you, what I've done is not personal," Omar replies. "You have to see it as part of our legal military conduct against the occupation." By the end of the book, Omar's political views may not have changed, but he seems to have. In a letter to Laura's father that he keeps on a shelf in his study, Omar writes, "God is so good to me that he gets me to know your Laura who made me feel the true meaning of love and forgiveness." It's Blumenfeld's patience, love for her family and willingness to listen even to those who harmed her family that eventually brings her -- and the man who shot her father -- to a place of understanding and even peace.

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Dulce Luna
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From: The Asylum, NC
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posted January 13, 2007 01:07 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Dulce Luna     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Wow, thats very touching...although I don't see it as "revenge", more like forgiveness.

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BornUnderDioscuri
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posted January 13, 2007 06:19 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for BornUnderDioscuri     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Yea in the end of the book she kinda explains that her forgiveness was in a way revenge. And she goes through the world looking for meaning of revenge thats why the title. LOVE this book

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