Rabbi Yisrael Rosen, Head of the Tzomet Institute for Halacha and Technology, criticized stabbing victim Michal Froman’s statements following the attempt to murder her ten days ago.
After being stabbed in the back in the community of Tekoa near Hevron, 30-year-old Froman, who is pregnant, said that the attacker had seemed “confused and scared.”
She added: “He could have killed me but he only stabbed me once, then ran away. I felt like someone sent him or that he just wanted to cross something off his list. If he had wanted to kill me he could have put more effort into it.”
One news source quoted her as saying – “This only strengthened the feeling that he seemed lost.”
Rabbi Rosen also quoted Michal’s mother-in-law, Hadassah, as saying that Michal had tried “to hug him and help him,” whereas Michal’s husband, Shivi, said that while the stabber’s family should be exiled to Gaza, “We will increase life on our side and the Palestinians’. Life will defeat death.”
Rabbi Rosen pointed to Michal’s late father-in-law, Rabbi Menahem Froman z”l, as the source of this “leftist” mode of thinking. While Rabbi Froman was a friend and an “unforgettable” person, he explained, his views and actions – an endless effort to forge a dialogue with his Arab and Muslim neighbors – were odd.
Michal’s statements reflect her father-in-law’s “excess load of ‘love of mankind,'” Rabbi Rosen opined. They are reminiscent of a living creature’s desire “to kiss the whip” that is used to hurt him, he said, and argued that a straight line leads from that kind of thinking to “the treacherousness” of leftists: “They understand the feelings of the enemy, who is so right and so…cutesy.”
While Rabbi Froman found some “nice” Muslim religious leaders who spoke in favor of peace, Rabbi Rosen expounded, they do not represent the jihadist mainstream. Love, he said, is not a weapon for victory, but for concessions.
Michal may be changing her mind about some things, however. In an interview on Channel 20 as she left the hospital, she was asked if her experience has caused her to change her views on coexistence. She responded affirmatively and noted that there were many Arabs in Shaare Tzedek Hospital, both staff and patients, and that she felt scared of them.