Report: Militants Freed from Israeli Jails Are Behind 14 Attacks

Nadav Shragai; Haaretz correspondent

Report: Militants Freed from Israeli Jails Are Behind 14 Attacks

The terrorists were purportedly released after having been defined as not having ‘blood on their hands.’

Haaretz

2006-09-17

Members of terror organizations who were released from Israeli custody after being defined as not having “blood on their hands” perpetrated 14 terror attacks in the past several years. In them, 132 Israeli civilians were killed and many others were injured, according to a report released over the weekend by the Almagor Terror Victims Association.

The organization said that from 1993-99, Israel released 6,912 terrorists in the context of various confidence-building gestures, some of whom returned to terror activities “at the cost of huge destruction of life.”

Almagor on Sunday called on the Israeli public “not to be led astray by formulations that take the terrorists’ murderousness lightly” and “not to console ourselves with the hope that the next terror attack will not hurt us or our immediate surroundings.”

The organization issued a list of 14 major attacks carried out or engineered by released terrorists, including the 2002 Park Hotel attack in Netanya (29 killed, 155 injured), the 2002 Karkur Junction attack (14 killed, 42 injured), the suicide attack at Jerusalem’s Cafit Cafe (11 killed, 20 injured), and the 2003 suicide attack at Cafe Hillel, also in Jerusalem, in which seven people were killed and many more were injured.

Sunday morning Almagor held a protest vigil of families of terror victims, across from the Prime Minister’s Office in the capital.

Among the protesters was Debra Appelbaum, whose husband, Dr. David Appelbaum, and 20-year-old daughter Nava were killed in the Cafe Hillel attack.