Brother of terror victim in letter to US ambassador: “You have to defend a government that appeases its enemies and pressures its friends."
By TOVAH LAZAROFFA woman lights a candle in memory of Eitam and Na'ama Henkin who were shot dead on Thursday and Aharon Bennett and Nehemia Lavi who were stabbed to death by a Palestinian man in Jerusalem's Old City on Saturday(photo credit: REUTERS)
US pressure on Israel to release Palestinian terrorists with blood on their hands made it more likely that violent attacks against Israelis would occur, charged Yigal Henkin in a letter he wrote to US Ambassador Dan Shapiro.Eitam Henkin and his wife Naama were killed last Thursday by Palestinian gunmen as they drove home with their four children.Eitam’s brother, Yigal, attacked US foreign policy, particularly with respect to Israel.In his letter to Shapiro, Yigal wrote, “The US government has seemed to forget that by doing so [pressuring Israel to release terrorists] it raised the chances that more people, among them US citizens like my brother Eitam, would be murdered at the hands of cold-blooded terrorists.”He continued, “I have to offer you my sincere condolences, Ambassador Shapiro. It is your duty, after all to explain on a daily basis an unexplainable and unjustifiable policy.“You have to defend a government that appeases its enemies and pressures its friends… You have to defend a government which focuses more on timetables than on results, succeeding in pulling out forces but and almost nothing else.“How unfortunate it was that the Arab-Israel conflict cannot be solved by pulling US troops out and declaring that the war has been won,” Yigal wrote.He ended his letter by stating, “You Ambassador Shapiro, have to defend all that and more. It is a heavy burden for any honest man.”The US Embassy said in response: “Ambassador Shapiro visited the Henkin family at their shiva to offer his deep condolences and those of the US government, and to express his identification with their grief and pain over the deaths of their beloved son and brother, Eitam z”l, an American citizen, and his wife, Naama z”l, who were murdered in a brutal terrorist attack last Thursday.“As in any such visit, the ambassador listened with respect to the sentiments the family chose to express,” the embassy said.