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The Anti-Israel Poisoning Starts Young
(Wall Street Journal) Micah Lakin - My father, Richard Lakin, a 76-year-old retired elementary-school principal from Connecticut, was on a bus in Jerusalem last October when two young Palestinian men boarded and began shooting and stabbing passengers indiscriminately. He had been shot in the head and stabbed multiple times in the head, face, chest and stomach - and died two weeks later. Two other passengers were killed and 15 injured. My father grew up a fighter for civil rights in America. He took those values with him in 1984 when he emigrated to Jerusalem, where he taught English to Arabs and Jews. He dedicated his life to promoting peaceful coexistence. Yet Palestinian newspapers praised Baha Alyan, one of the terrorists who murdered my father, as a "martyr and intellectual." PA President Mahmoud Abbas met with the families of the attackers and praised them as "martyrs." Muhammad Alyan, the father of Baha Alyan, recently spoke about his son the "martyr" to children at Jabel Mukaber Elementary School in east Jerusalem, about half a mile from where my father lived. I asked school officials if I could come and share my father's message of peace and coexistence. My offer was rejected. By encouraging hatred, Palestinian leaders distance all of us from the love and belief in peaceful coexistence for which my father stood.