One Woman's Revenge Against a Terrorist

April 4, 2002 -- Twelve years after a Palestinian militant tried to kill her father on the streets of Jerusalem, Laura Blumenfeld went searching for her dad's would-be murderer.

"Someone tried to kill my father and I couldn't just accept that," says Blumenfeld, a Washington Post reporter and author of the new book, Revenge: A Story of Hope.

"My parents raised me to believe that the world was a beautiful place," she says. But her assumptions were shattered when her father was shot while walking through a marketplace in Jerusalem's Old City.

So she set out on an odyssey of anger and revenge, in search of a terrorist whom she wanted to confront.

"Was I a hero or a fool?" she says. "I think that's really for everybody to decide."

Finding Her Target

Blumenfeld's mission was born of the violent events that were a precursor to the suicide bombers of today. In the winter of 1986, a Palestinian death gang backed by Syria randomly targeted tourists in Jerusalem. A young Christian pilgrim was shot dead at point-blank range. A German tourist was wounded by a bullet that lodged near her spine. An Israeli woman was gunned down in her office. And Laura's father, David Blumenfeld, a tourist from Glen Cove, N.Y., narrowly escaped death when a bullet grazed his head.

Laura Blumenfeld became obsessed with finding out who had fired the bullet that barely missed her father's brain. "Who was the person, and was there anything I could do about it? How could I respond?" she wanted to know.

In 1998, Blumenfeld took a leave of absence from The Washington Post and moved to Israel with her husband. Then, she started to research the gang that was responsible. Clippings and documents from the prosuectors' office in Jerusalem eventually led her to the Khatib family in a West Bank town called Kalandia.

"They were a well known PLPF family, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, who right now are some of the people, you know, strapping on dynamite and walking into Saturday night pizza parties filled with Israeli teenagers," says Blumenfeld.

Using her broken Arabic and some English, she introduced herself simply as Laura, a journalist from America. The family welcomed her into their home, serving her coffee and orange soda. Trying to reveal no emotion, she began asking questions. She learned that the youngest Khatib son, Omar, had been imprisoned for militant activities when he was 23. After more prodding, Blumenfeld found out that Omar had indeed tried to kill someone.

There was a 12-year-old nephew sitting on the couch, she remembers, and when she asked who Omar had tried to kill, he said, "Some Jew.'"

Blumenfeld had found her target, but she still professed to be a disinterested journalist and continued taking notes.

When the family recalled the incident of Omar shooting a Jewish man, says Blumenfeld, "Everybody was laughing." Then, she says, the Khatib mother "reached over and kind of like slapped my knee, like this was a real knee-slapping moment."

The family supported Omar and were proud of him. "It's what we have to do. No justice comes from the Jews," Blumenfeld remembers Omar's brother Saeed saying. "We make our own justice until we reclaim all of Palestine."

Blumenfeld couldn't believe it. "I was sitting in the living room with the family of the man who tried to kill my father, drinking orange soda and eating cake, and they talked about it in such a casual way," says Blumenfeld.

"I was disgusted," she says, adding that she was also disgusted with herself for accepting the Khatibs' hospitality.

Corresponding With the Shooter

Blumenfeld returned to the family's home many times, telling them she was writing a book on the region and asking if she could write letters to Omar in prison, secretly laying the trap that would take her to him.

"The Khatib family didn't know that I was Jewish, that I was the victim's daughter," she says. "I deceived them absolutely. They never asked me who I was. If they had, I don't know what I would have done."

Meanwhile, Blumenfeld was becoming a familiar presence in the Khatib home, spending time there before she would ask Imad to bring her letters to Omar. The little children sat in her lap. One woman even offered to name her unborn child Laura after her, and another gave her a silver ring off her own finger. "'This is for you, you're a member of the Khatib family now,'" Blumenfeld remembers the woman saying. "It was an incredibly confusing moment."

Blumenfeld listened to their dreams of life outside Israeli occupation, and the family always talked about how much they loved and missed Omar.

"There were moments when they would tell me a story from his childhood, and I would be charmed," says Blumenfeld. "And then I would sort of come back to that moment with a pang and realize this is the man who tried to kill my father."

Her relationship with the Khatib family paid off. Omar's brother Imad agreed to smuggle letters back and forth.

She explained to Omar that she was a journalist writing a book about the region, and the two began a correspondence. She said she wanted to tell the story of his life, letting readers understand him and why he shot a Jewish man. She told him that she had met his target, a quiet, generous man who had lost his grandparents in the Holocaust, who "supports and likes Palestinians," and who "taught that respect to his children."

Omar defended what he had done as part of "our legal military conduct against occupation," writing that "there is a huge difference, my dear, between 'terror' and the right of self-determination."

As time passed, Omar shared with Blumenfeld his love of English literature and "the smell of the sea," and his struggle with asthma. Blumenfeld began to notice a gradual change, as Omar expressed regret for what he had done. "People are so different when you get to know them from near," Omar wrote.

A 'Defining Moment'

Blumenfeld traveled the world to explore revenge in other cultures. In Sicily she learned, for example, "you have to take revenge, otherwise you're a coward." She traveled to Greece, Germany and Iran, questioning religious leaders. In Albania she discovered that there is a guidebook outlining every detail of revenge for different scenarios.

After a year of travel, torment, and letters to Omar, it was time for her to seal her purpose.She wrote one word on a piece of paper that she put in Jerusalem's Western Wall, where millions of visitors insert prayers.

"I knew that it would take some kind of radical act to achieve that, something crazy and risky," she says of her one-word prayer.

Blumenfeld finally saw Omar in person at a court hearing to review his case in 1999. The 36-year-old was trying to get out of prison on medical grounds because of his asthma.

"He didn't look terribly sick and he didn't look terribly evil," recalls Blumenfeld. "He looked very studious, which he actually is … He had a certain amount of pride, and he was slapping the other prisoners on the back, and that made me worry too: Is he remorseful? Is he a hero for having done what he did to my father?"

Blumenfeld describes her experience in the courtroom as the "defining moment" of her life because she was forced to make a choice: "An eye for an eye? Turn the other cheek? All year, I had been a journalist, stepping back. I was an observer, I didn't have to do anything. I was just going to gather some more information. And I knew this day, whether I was ready or not, I'd have to act."

Blumenfeld asked for permission to speak in the courtroom, but first scribbled a note to Omar asking that he understand why she did what she was about to do.

Then she stood up and told the court: "I come from America. As a journalist I've come to know his family, and through his family I've come to know Omar … I don't know all the facts in the case, but what I do know is that I believe that Omar is sorry for what he did … I've spoken to the victim and the victim says 12 years in jail, that's enough.'"

At that point, Blumenfeld says, the judges cut her off, saying she had no right to speak. Then, to the astonishment of Omar, his family, and the judges, she revealed why she had every right to speak on behalf of Omar's victim.

"Ani habat shelo," Blumenfeld told the courtroom in Hebrew — "I am his daughter."

"For me," says Blumenfeld, "this was my revenge. This was my moment to confront him."

She then told Omar in the courtroom: "You promised me in a letter that you would never hurt anybody again. And this is on your honor. This is between our two families. This is about an agreement between the Khatibs and the Blumenfelds."

Blumenfeld told Omar she had deceived him and his family for one reason: "Because I love my father very much … and we're good people and we're not military targets and you can't just kill us."

Despite her testimony, Omar was denied parole until 2010.

A Transformation

Four weeks ago, during what turned out to be some of the most intense violence between Israelis and Palestinians in decades, Primetime brought Laura Blumenfeld and her father over to meet Omar Khatib's family for the first time.

"I felt so guilty," says Blumenfeld. "I was just thinking: How would I feel if someone deceived me for a year? I wouldn't like it. I thought they might hate me."

But the Khatibs welcomed the Blumenfelds into their home, bringing out food, drink, and a water pipe filled with flavored tobacco. Primetime taped the scene for Omar to see.

In a video message to his would-be killer, David Blumenfeld said, "You are an intelligent, educated person … You're a young man still, even though those years you spent in prison, you still have a life to lead."

Watching the tape, Omar responded: "I'm admiring him so much. I am looking at him as if hearing my father talking to me."

Omar also revealed new details about the shooting, calling David his "friend." It was the first bullet he ever fired, he said, and it would also be the last. His target, who was wearing a Jewish skullcap, was chosen randomly.

"Now, through all my days in the prison, I thought a lot about these ways of violence," he says. "I don't agree with choosing the violence as a way for solving problems, as a way for getting our rights … I feel sorry for what has happened."

Omar also spoke to Laura. "She chose the positive way of getting revenge from me," he said. "And she succeeded."

The one-word prayer Laura Blumenfeld had scribbled down and folded inside the Western Wall had been answered: transformation.

"Ultimately, that's what I wanted," she says. "I wanted to believe that this symbol of evil or terror in the world could be transformed into something good."