Moral asymmetry: Gazan cured by Israeli doctors returns to blow them up

Israeli surgeries saved her life and skin after severe burns when she was six. Years later Wafa, a Gazan who had an entry visa into Israel for continuing treatments, volunteered to be a suicide bomber to kill Israelis — in the same hospital where she got treated.

At the checkpoint, Israelis saw the bomb. She tried to detonate it. It didn’t work. She got 12 years in prison. The Israelis continued to treat her burns and gave her a college education. She was returned to Gaza in the 2011 Galid Shalit prisoner release.

Shortly thereafter, journalist Leland Vittert visited her in Gaza on the quest for a redemption story. He assumed she was repentant. He showed her the video of her getting caught at the border checkpoint, when she tried to detonate. What do you think now of what you did? he asked.

“I’m very proud of this,” she responded, per translation. “I hope the time will come and I will live again the moments I was tasting and smelling Paradise.”

Vittert was flabbergasted.

“That’s when my mind was made up about the moral clarity of the Israeli-Palestinian debate,” Vittert says. “The story of Wafa is the one that explains everything about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”