April 29, 2019

When Terrorists Killed His Daughter, His Long Crusade for Justice Began

I learned of Sunday’s horrific suicide bombings in Sri Lanka just as I was finishing a new book about an earlier instance of terror.

I learned of Sunday’s horrific suicide bombings in Sri Lanka just as I was finishing a new book about an earlier instance of terror.

On the morning of April 9, 1995, a Palestinian suicide terrorist blew up an Israeli bus filled with passengers traveling to Kfar Darom, a town near the Mediterranean shore in the Gaza Strip. Eight people were killed, including Alisa Flatow, a Brandeis University student from New Jersey who was spending a semester abroad. A shard of shrapnel punctured her head, fatally lacerating her brain.

By the time Stephen M. Flatow reached his daughter at the Beersheba hospital to which she had been airlifted, she was already dead. In “A Father’s Story,” his affecting, intense, and compelling memoir about Alisa’s murder and what it led to, he writes that it was too late “to hear my daughter’s voice, or see a look of recognition in her eyes, before she died.” But it was not too late to turn the awful evil of Alisa’s death into a beautiful affirmation of life: Flatow and his wife, Roz, agreed to donate Alisa’s vital organs — her heart, pancreas, liver, lungs, and kidneys — to save the lives of six strangers. At the time, such donations were very rare in Israel, and the decision by Alisa’s parents caused a sensation. Israel’s prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, flew to New Jersey to visit the bereaved family and thank them for the gift of Alisa’s organs.

That was only the beginning of Flatow’s determination to wring something meaningful and positive from the atrocity that had shattered his world.

“I very much wanted my government to track down and punish the people responsible for Alisa’s murder,” he writes. “Almost immediately after the attack that killed Alisa, Islamic Jihad sent out a fax taking credit for it. Taking credit for killing my daughter. You can imagine how I felt.”

Those of us who haven’t lost a loved one to terrorism probably can’t fully imagine how he felt, but the families of the 359 men, women, and children blown up in Sri Lanka surely can. On Tuesday, ISIS claimed responsibility for the savage Easter carnage, hailing the suicide bombers as “brothers.” Among the slaughtered innocents were several American citizens, including Kieran Shafritz de Zoysa, an 11-year-old from the Sidwell Friends school in Washington, DC, and Dieter Kowalski of Wisconsin, who worked for an educational publishing firm. Nothing will ever make up for what the victims’ families have suffered. But they may be able to hold accountable some of those responsible — thanks in part to a 20-year quest for justice that Flatow embarked upon after Alisa’s death.

The Kfar Darom bus bombing was carried out by a 22-year-old Islamic Jihad recruit, but he was just a cog in a terror network financed by Iran. Flatow yearned to make the Iranian regime pay for what it had done, but there existed no legal mechanism for doing so. There does now. “A Father’s Story” is the tale of how Flatow brought about that change in the law, turning US courtrooms into a venue where American citizens could pursue the world’s ultimate terrorist monsters: the governments that sponsor terror groups and the financial institutions through which they operate.

Under longstanding sovereign immunity rules, federal law in 1995 barred Americans from suing foreign governments in US courts. Flatow undertook a marathon of strategizing, lobbying, cajoling, and testifying to get those rules altered. He succeeded when Congress enacted a measure (the “Flatow Amendment”), which stripped immunity from foreign governments designated as state sponsors of terrorism. That enabled Flatow to sue the government of Iran in federal court, the first such suit ever brought on behalf of victims of terrorism. In 1998, a federal judge ruled Iran responsible for Alisa Flatow’s death, and awarded her family $247 million.

To collect that judgment, Flatow — soon followed by other families of terror victims — tried to place a lien on Iranian assets held in the United States, including $400 million dollars frozen by the US government after the 1979 seizure of the American embassy in Tehran. He was shocked when the Clinton administration went to court to block him, arguing that the US government needed those frozen assets for leverage in negotiating with Iran. Eventually, after a long struggle, the Flatows agreed to accept a modest fraction of the judgment they had been awarded, on the condition that the funds would eventually be reimbursed out of Iran’s frozen assets when a deal was reached to unblock them.

But “A Father’s Story” is about much more than legal roadblocks and political skirmishing. Entwined with Flatow’s ongoing efforts to open doors so victims of terrorism can seek some measure of recompense from terror-sponsoring regimes is his loving portrait of Alisa — bright, strong-willed, full of laughter, and still grievously missed — and his deeply humane insights into the impact terrorism has on families left to pick up the pieces.

The scourge of modern terrorism is unspeakably evil. The fate that befell Alisa Flatow has befallen so many others; the hundreds murdered in Sri Lanka on Easter are the latest victims, but they won’t be the last. In the so-called war on terrorism, there will be no easy, decisive victory. When the terror-masters are finally defeated, it will be because of people like Stephen Flatow — an easygoing New Jersey dad who loved his daughter too much not to fight back against those who stole her life. He has been fighting for more than 20 years, and isn’t ready to give up yet.

(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe).

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.