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Release of Hamas Murderers Reopens Old Wounds in Israel
(New York Times) Natan Odenheimer - Hamas leader Ashraf Zughayer, 46, serving a life sentence in Israeli prison for murdering five Israelis and a British Jew in a Tel Aviv suicide bus bombing in 2002, was released in January as part of the ceasefire-hostage deal. He rode through the streets of eastern Jerusalem on a truck festooned with green Hamas flags, surrounded by jubilant supporters, as Tova Sisso, whose mother, Rozana, a Holocaust survivor, was killed in the attack, watched with horror. "Seeing him being celebrated like this tears open a deep wound all over again," Ms. Sisso said. More than 200 of those freed were serving life sentences for murder and other offenses for their role in bombings and shootings that deliberately targeted civilians, while many Palestinians call them heroes.