Word: haran
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Twenty seven years ago, Smadar Haran suffocated her two-year-old daughter. She was trying to quiet the whimpering child as the two of them hid in the family's attic while PLO terrorists searched for them in their apartment in the coastal Israeli town of Nahariya. The terrorists didn't find them but took Smadar's husband and their four-year-old daughter hostage. When the cell, retreating as security forces pursued them, found the rubber boat they'd arrived in disabled by gunfire, one of the members shot Smadar's husband Danny in the back and drowned...
...sole surviving member of the cell, that Hizballah leader Hasan Nasrallah promised to liberate this year from an Israeli prison by kidnapping Israeli soldiers to hold as a bargaining chip, an act Hizballah pulled off two weeks ago, precipitating the current fighting across the Israel-Lebanon border. Smadar Haran, meanwhile, has found herself again directly affected by the conflict, albeit in a much milder way. Nahariya is just five miles from the border with Lebanon and was the target of many of the rockets Hizballah has fired into Israeli towns since Israel launched its bombardment of Lebanon to retaliate...
...Haran supports the government's offensive. She thinks it's necessary to show Hizballah that Israel is strong in order to deter further aggression from the group. As to whether Israel should consider exchanging Kuntar for the kidnapped Israeli soldiers, Haran says she won't share her views with anyone but her closest friends. She adds, " I'm not going to be part of Nasrallah's game. He would like to see us turn family against family, pain against pain. But I won't comment on what the government should do. It's a national question. I'm just...
...Haran is a kind of local hero of normalcy. Hers was an unbearable story, but she bore it. She never sought media attention, but she didn't scurry from it either. Today, she relates the events of April, 22, 1979, with a strong voice, in a beat as steady as a metronome. She skirts over the details only when describing how two-year-old Yael died. She says there was never any question that she'd start a new family. "I knew nobody could call me Mom anymore, but I was still Mom in my heart," she says. "I felt...
...avenging their brother's death, or something. From my situation, I know there are other possibilities: to rebuild life, to understand that life is sacred, that each one of us, Jews and Arabs, should try to find a way to have a good life." After her family was murdered, Haran, who had been an art teacher, pursued a master's degree in social work and is now a psychotherapist working in a clinic with Jewish and Arab children with special needs...