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This thread still is about David Boim, who was murdered on May 13, 1996, Beit-El, in the Occupied Territories of the West Bank. Arab gunmen opened fire on a hitchhiking stand near Beit El, wounding three Israelis and killing David Boim 17, an American- Israeli from New York. At the time, no one claimed responsibility for the attack, although either the Islamic Jihad or Hamas were suspected. It is said that Imjad Muhammad Hinawi, a member of Hamas, took part in the murder of 16-year old David Boim. The PA detained Hinawi but subsequently released him in February 1997.

Beit El, where the Boim family settled, is an classed as an illegal settlement and was captured by Israel during the six-day war in 1967 as a military settlement, and lies fifteen minutes north of Jerusalem and close to the Arab city of Ramallah. Beit El colonies were established between the years 1977 and 1979 on land confiscated from the Palestinians villages of Beittin, Dura El Qare and Al Bireh.

"The justice-loving journalist Yoav Yitzhak wrote in Ma'ariv, with a certain degree of fiendishness, that it is a serious oversight that these wretched villagers are permitted to walk near the settlements and thereby to endanger their security, while the settler Emuna Elon, who lives in Beit El, said on Dan Shilon's television program that her heart was stirred by these pilgrims. Maybe the horrific plan of her husband, Tourism Minister Benny Elon, to expel all of these villagers from their land will solve the problem. But apart from these sanctimonious statements, it appears that the fate of her neighbors does not affect her or her friends. Tanks, checkpoints, refugees, racially separated roads, long lines of people on foot, ambulances bouncing along rocky roads and terrible suffering can be seen every day from the window of the settler in Beit El, and he lives comfortably with it all. It is difficult to comprehend how, among the nearly 5,000 inhabitants of Beit El, there is not a single righteous man in Sodom, no one who will stand up and admit wholeheartedly that his settlement, and all others like it, is the cause of all this suffering. How is it that there is not a single settler in Beit El who is losing sleep over the women in labor who cannot get to the hospital, the sick people who die along the twisted dirt paths, the children who must walk to pay a holiday visit to their grandmother? It must take a large degree of cold-heartedness to drive on the paved road leading from your house and see the large numbers of people who are forced to walk in the mud and rubble just because of the existence of your settlement - and to keep on believing in the justice of that distorted path; to see all that suffering through your window without batting an eyelash. The dispute with these settlements cannot be a political discussion only, but also a deep moral dispute because of the human suffering they impose on their neighbors."
Gideon Levy, in Ha'aretz, March 04, 2002

I trust that this landmark court case will give hope to other grieving American parents whose children have been murdered during this conflict in the Occupied Territories and would urge them also to seek justice and compensation through the American Justice system.

As yet, there has been no actual proof that the three chicago charities provided support to Hamas, and their leaders have repeatedly denied the unproven claims such as this statement from the secretary of the Qu'ranic Literacy Institute:

"In the basement of an unremarkable suburban house in south-west Chicago, it has built up a vast library of Arabic texts to support its 12-year project to write a new English translation of the Koran. The Boims accuse the Institute of knowingly providing cover to a man alleged to be a key Hamas figure in the United States. However, the group's secretary, Amer Haleem, says the Institute has been "dragged into" the case for other reasons: "guilt by association and religious persecution. "There's absolutely no connection between us and any terrorist organisation. They're depending on the fact that any Muslim can be accused of anything now and the American people will say 'By and large, well, it must be true'."

Such a case can only bring into questioning the use of other American charitable organisations, such as the Ataret Cohanim whose funding of Settlers to buy guns and pre-fabs and provide community dwellings in order to settle in Israeli Settlements in Occupied Territory under IDF Military Occupation in Palestine and has a defined goal of ridding Jerusalem of both Christian and Moslem.
(see http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/1196/9611016.htm)

This is what Palestinian life has been reduced to:
"Their mother serves us tea and draws water from a well on her half-demolished front porch. Their small, unlit kitchen is a hollowed out cave which is attached to the house. The women sit on their haunches preparing the evening meal. We are chilled to the bone as the house has no central heating. Jabber said that a few years ago settlers came to his house with guns, broke his windows, told them to leave and screamed that this is their land. Although Jabber showed them deeds to the land dating back to the Ottoman Empire, they would not listen. During the attack his youngest daughter's eye was injured by flying glass. She had to have several operations in Jerusalem.
After the settlers took his land he called the police and hired lawyers but nothing could be done. Although he received no help from the UN's relief agency, UNWRA, Hamas or the Palestinian Authority, friends, family and the CPT helped him rebuild his house. He still has some grape vines and olive trees and grows cauliflower and other crops but most of his land was confiscated by the IDF to build by-pass roads for the settlers. He has not received a penny in compensation"
source: http://www.bsec.org/news/israelpalestine03.html

Of course, the Boim's were not THOSE kind of settler's. They had no wish to enter a conflict, only to live close by to Jerusalem and it has been said many times before that generally, Palestinians do not yet understand the ties which Jewish folk have to the land of Israel,and it's historical and biblical landmarks. The Boim Case is a landmark case indeed, and I had no intention to offend the Boim family by mentioning the names of other young Americans who had been murdered as a result of the continued conflict in the Illegal Israeli Settlements of the Occupied Territories. But it's not just American youths who are losing their lives in the Holy Land, there are many other mothers and fathers who have lost their loved ones with no financial compensation for their physical loss and emotional trauma, and instead choose to work towards peace, Jeruasalemites like Rami Elhanas, an israeli who lost his daughter in a suicide attack .

"On September 4th 1997, at three o’clock in the afternoon, Smadar, 14 years old, was killed in a suicide attack on her way from school in Jerusalem. She and her best friend were killed and a third classmate was badly injured. A total of five people died in the attack.
“Until six years ago I was locked up in my own bubble. I was cynical and not at all interested in politics. I had a perfect life with a wonderful wife and four children.”
I meet Rami Elhanas at his graphic design office in Jerusalem, and he tells me about his daughter who should have been 20 years old today. He is 53 years old, the seventh generation born in Jerusalem and married to Dr. Nurit Peled-Elhanan, who received an award from the European Parliament for her work, and is also working as a doctor at Hebrew University. Today they have three children ages 26, 24 and 11.
“When such a thing happens to you, you have three choices. The first is to commit suicide, but I still had my family to take care of. The other choice is to hate and take revenge – but will that bring my daughter back? The third choice is to ask yourself why this happens, what makes a person so desperate that he chose to blow himself up?”
Rami says that the tragedy was an awakening for him, and that today he puts a lot of his time into work for peace, going to Israeli schools and talking about the conflict from different perspectives. “Sometimes I have a Palestinian with me, who has also lost a child in the conflict. It is a fantastic experience and very overwhelming. Many of the students have never meet a Palestinian, and suddenly they have one in their own classroom who speaks Hebrew as fluently as themselves. Sometimes they ask him to leave, and then he says that he has nowhere else to go, and that this is his homeland too. It is very interesting, and the emotional part is important. It means a lot to stand in front of an 18-year old, who will serve the army next year, and talk about the occupation and what it does to people. But many of them are very ignorant and don’t want to know"
source: http://www.eappi.org/eappi.nsf/index/rep-marja3.html

The Israeli-Palestinian Bereaved Families´ Forum For Peace can be found here at http://www.theparentscircle.com/