Last Oct. 13, a few weeks into the current “knife intifada,” a 22-year-old Palestinian named Baha Alyan boarded a Jerusalem bus with an accomplice — Hamas terrorist Bilal Ghanem, who had served time in an Israeli prison — and went on a stabbing and shooting spree whose purpose was to kill Jews.
The two monsters were pretty successful in their endeavor that day, managing to wound more than a dozen passengers and slaughter three: Haim Haviv, 78, Alon Govberg, 51, and Richard Lakin, 76, who suffered multiple gunshot and stab wounds and died two weeks later. Alyan was killed by Israeli security forces; Ghanem was arrested.
While Lakin, an immigrant to Israel from the United States, was lying critically wounded in the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon paid a visit to his hospital bedside. It was the least Ban could do, while calling on “both sides” to ease tensions and exercise restraint — especially since Lakin had been a lifelong promoter of peace and social justice.
Upon Lakin’s death, Ban even stressed this fact in a condolence letter to Lakin’s widow, which he ended by assuring her that the U.N. would “continue its efforts to promote a return to negotiations aimed at resolving this bitter conflict once and for all.”
Four months later, in February, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas invited 11 families of “martyrs” to his compound in Ramallah to honor them for having sons who were killed while committing terror attacks against Israelis. Alyan’s parents were among these distinguished guests.