In 1986, a terrorist walked up to Laura Blumenfeld's father on a busy Jerusalem
street and shot him in the head, nearly killing him. Laura, a reporter for The Washington Post, more than 10 years later,
decided to find the man responsible for this random act of violence and search for the true meaning of vengeance.
After checking court records, she tracked down the family of imprisoned
Palestinian rebel Omar Khatib. Not revealing her identity, she told the family she was a journalist researching violence in
the Middle East. It soon became clear their son was the gunman who had attacked her father.
When Khatib appeared in court, attempting to win his freedom, Laura stood
up and made a surprising declaration that stunned the courtroom and Khatib. It was, she says, the "defining moment of my life."
And the revelation was that she was the daughter of the man Khatib attempted to kill.
Here's what she said in an interview: "Well, as I traveled the world and
listened to other people's stories of revenge, it seems that there was a stark choice of turn the other cheek or an eye for
an eye. And what I had discovered really was a third way, which is transformation, which basically says that you don't have
to destroy your enemy, you can transform your enemy instead. That's a new way of getting revenge. I decided it was something
risky and definitely optimistic, but I had to try it. I decided if I performed some kind of act of generosity toward him,
maybe that would turn him around. Maybe I could restore my father's humanity that had been denied at the time."
Here are links to some of the sites on her:
