Bat-Chen's LEGACY FOR PEACE
Bat-Chen was born on the 13th of Adar, 5741(March 4,1996)
Bat-Chen was killed on the 13th of Adar, 5756(March 19, 1981)
It was her 15th birthday
Our daughter, Bat-Chen, was born on Purim and murdered on Purim, on her fifteenth birthday, in a terrorist attack at Dizengoff Center in the heart of Tel Aviv on March 4th, 1996. Since that fateful day, our Purim holiday celebration has changed from a day of double happiness to a memorial day. Instead of bringing holiday sweets to friends-- friends bring cakes and other home-made treats to our memorial service for Bat-Chen.
Thirteen people were murdered in that vicious terrorist attack, including two of Bat-Chen's best friends: Hadas Dror and Dana Gutterman. The three girls were all from the Tel Mond area..
On Bat-Chen's tombstone we engraved the sentence from Bat-Chen's writings: "Where does one get the right to take the most beautiful present – life itself?" She wrote this to Leah Rabin in a condolence letter after Prime Minister Rabin was murdered.
For the Shloshim (thirtieth day) memorial service, Bat-Chen's father Tzvika wrote:
Bat-Chen!!! We remember you as
You were, with lots of hair, with lots
Of wonderful writing that transmits an important message
Of a very mature girl with lots of slightly whistling S's, with lots of smiles
And a great, great love of life.
Born in Raanana,
Exactly on the holiday of Purim,
She has curious, wise, light blue eyes
And golden locks decorate her face
At the age of three and a half she wandered to Kibbutz Kfar Aza
And at six and a half to the region of Tel Mond moved,
Six beautiful years in our school she spent
And was fortunate enough to participate in the final play about
Jerusalem, the city she so loved.
At the scouts and at the community center she was active
And during her free time, she wrote her diaries,
Where she wrote all that was in her heart."
During the seven days of mourning we found her diaries, up to that day we did not know that she was writing diaries. In her diaries she leaves us her legacy:
1. To be a poet: "For me writing is a wonderful thing that makes me a happy person" – as she wrote in her seventh grade diary.
2. To live in peace with our Arab neighbors – as she wrote in her last text, three months before she was murdered: "Everyone has a dream. One wants to be a millionaire and the other wants to be an author and I have a dream about peace."
Once the seven days of mourning were over, we started to look for ways to fulfill her legacy.
•We collected all of her writings into a book entitled: Writing for me is a Wonderful Thing – and her writings have been translated and published into Arabic, Dutch, Italian, German and Japanese. And in the year 2008, when the State turns 60, her book will be published in English."
•We, my husband Tzvika, our young son Ofri and myself, have joined the initiative of Yitzchak Frankenthal and, together with him, have founded the Forum of the Israeli and Palestinian Bereaved Families.
Bat-Chen's Will for Peace:
Bat-Chen's Will for Peace starts at a very early age, already in her second grade notebook we find texts in which Bat-Chen expresses her yearning for peace:
What do I ask of the New Year
That there will not be wars,
And there will be peace.
That Maya will be my teacher.
That I will have many friends.
That we will finish (building) the house."
And in third grade she continues to express her yearning for peace in a text in which she is meant to make wishes to God for the New Year:
To God,
I wanted to make a few requests:
The first request, that my grandfather will come back to life.
The second, that there will not be wars.
And the third, that we shall live in peace with all of the countries."
And in that same year, towards Independence Day, when, at school, she was asked to answer the question 'what is my country lacking' she writes:
"My beautiful and good country lacks nothing.
There are flowers
And there are trees too,
And a great deal of butterflies.
Almost anything that you want, you will get.
A wonderful country.
But one thing is missing, and that is peace.
I miss it very much.
Every day when, on the radio, I hear about the Intifada and what is going on,
A bad feeling penetrates my heart and I ask my mother:
When will peace arrive to be with us?
Every day I look out for it, and exclaim loudly:
Come, Peace! Peace!
I call and call, but it does not come…"
In her seventh grade diary we discover that the political situation concerned Bat-Chen greatly and one of the most moving of her texts is entitled:
"Jews and Arabs"
The word "Arab" reminds some of us of a knife in the back, death, stones, murders, Molotov Cocktails, burning tires, terrorists, Hezbollah.
Some of us make a distinction: there are Arab murderers as there are Jewish murderers. In every country there are good and bad people and some would say: the Arabs are our good friends, they too deserve rights and decent living conditions.
There is great turmoil in our little country. There are three opinions of the Arabs: the settlers and the extreme right despise the Arabs, the left draws a distinction and the extreme left demands rights for Arabs too!
It is very difficult for me to decide which position I hold. One moment I favor the left, then suddenly the radio announcer says: Jews have been murdered, terrorists have been caught and I say: That could have been someone from my own family!
All of the hatred started two thousand years ago, and more. We and the Arabs do not manage to get along. I always say: There are good Arabs too. But in the meantime, I only hear of murderers.
I want peace, and believe that in the end there will be peace, because it is essential for the continuation of life…
When she is in eighth grade, in 1994, Bat-Chen chooses to write a paper about "The Peace and the Personal War in my Family." The inspiring factor is the signing of the peace treaty with Jordan. At that time, my mother, Naomi Ben-Shoham, who was born in Jordan, is invited to the ceremony of the signing of the treaty by the then Prime Minister, Yitzchak Rabin. In this paper, Bat-Chen interviews my mother about her participation in the ceremony and her father, Tzvika, about the Yom Kippur battle, in which he participated and for which he received the Distinguished Service Medal. She thought that if she interviewed Tzvika about the war she could close the era of war for her family. During that time, Bat-Chen felt that peace is just around the corner and was very optimistic, as can be seen in the words of summary of her paper:
"In summary of war and peace
There is not much left to be said.
Now we are in a kind of an in between situation.
There is not real peace in the Middle East,
Nor is there a real state of war.
And we are marching forwards peace.
We are approaching peace
With a preparedness to understand the others,
With a desire to change things,
With one clear goal:
To eradicate the hatred that has been engraved upon us for many years,
And with the understanding,
That it is very easy to acquire enemies,
But the smart thing to do is to make friends.
We come as people who know much about war,
But very little about peace.
But from now on, this we will start to change…"
That same year she also chooses to participate in an English language letter writing project with Arab youth from Kfar Kassem. We know that Bat-Chen had a hard time with English, but the topic of co-existence was very important for her and she decides to join the project. In her notebook, we find a draft of a letter that she wrote to Nida, her friend from Kfar Kassem:
Letter to Nida:
"Hello Nida
My hobbies are reading, writing, watching television and riding horses.
I was very happy to receive your letter, and I am sorry to have sent mine late.
I am already looking forward to the encounter and on the nineteenth of March I have a birthday.
I support the peace process. I hate mathematics.
I live in Tel Mond."
She opens the letter in English, shifts to Hebrew and finally asks her friend Lihi to translate it for her.
On November 4th, 1995, when she was in ninth grade, Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin was murdered (Bat-Chen was murdered on March 4th, 1996, exactly four months after the murder of Rabin.) Rabin's murder shocked her very much; she vehemently insisted on travelling to Jerusalem to pass in front of his coffin which was placed in the Knesset Square. She was a small, slender fourteen-and-a-half year old girl and she managed to squeeze through the crowds and pass in front of his coffin.
One week after the murder, she wrote a letter to Leah Rabin, in which she predicted what would happen to our country following this terrible assassination:
"To Leah Rabin
Three gunshots, and suddenly it is over.
Now he is addressed in the past tense.
Suddenly the present becomes the past,
And of the past, sheer memory remains.
We stand, shed another tear,
Wanting to think that it did not really happen.
That it is just a bad dream.
That tomorrow morning we will wake up,
And everything will work itself out.
But we awake to a gloomy reality,
To pain mixed with hatred.
It seems that we cannot yet digest the magnitude of the loss,
And do not understand how severe it is.
Indeed, how can such a terrible act be digested!
For we do not live in a jungle, but in a state.
And everyone has the right to express opinions,
Because it is natural and clear that everyone should have a different opinion,
And that not everyone will think the same.
It is like the first piece of Domino to fall, collapsing the rest in a line.
Our head, quite literally, has fallen, and now everything is falling apart.
As if he was the head, and we are the body.
And when the head does not function, the body too dies.
It is hard to build a tower of unlike pieces, when one part does not match the next.
And one cannot place a big brick upon a smaller one.
One must be very talented
To build an orderly, straight tower.
But with one kick it is possible to tear down and ruin a state
that was built, one brick at a time,
of unlike materials
that are very complex.
That kick not only tore down the tower,
But brought the people to see things in a different way…
I might be no more than an innocent girl,
But I do not understand how people take the law into their own hands.
If he thinks otherwise, he stands up and kills?
Where does one get the right to take the most beautiful present - life itself?
I share the sorrow of the family
And hope that you do not come to know further sorrow
Yours, Bat-Chen Shahak"
Three months before she was killed, when in ninth grade, Bat-Chen needs to select a topic to speak about, in English, in front of the class, and of course, Bat-Chen chooses to speak about peace:
"A dream of peace
Every person has a dream.
One wants to be a millionaire,
And the next wants to be an author
And I have a dream
About peace…
We, at home, especially my husband Tzvika and myself (Ayelet), are trying to realize Bat-Chen's dream of peace by using her writings and her story to recruit and open as many hearts as possible to support the peace process and the dialogue between people.
And they will arrive at Bat-Chen's conclusion "That it is very easy to acquire enemies, but the smart thing is to make friends."
The Shahak Family, Tel Mond
