Father of Bnei Brak terrorist: ‘Would never have let him go’ if I knew what he’d do

Ahmad Hamarsheh, the father of the Bnei Brak terrorist who killed five Israelis, tells The Times of Israel that discovering his son’s participation in the attack was a “surprise.”

“If I knew what he was going to do, I would never have let him go,” Hamarsheh says, adding that he last saw his son six hours before the attack. “Does anyone want to have their son die like that?”

Hamarsheh’s son Diaa, 27, slipped through a breach in the fence to enter Israel. On Monday night, he opened fire at Israelis in Bnei Brak in the bloodiest single terror attack since 2014.

Diaa was a “serious” man, but “I would never have guessed that he had this idea in his head,” Hamarsheh says.

“We must end this cycle of violence,” he adds.

But Hamarsheh says that he won’t call his deceased son a terrorist.

“Would anyone call the soldiers who kill our children and shot at us terrorists?” Hamarsheh asks rhetorically. “As soon as they do so, I’ll get up the next morning and call my son a terrorist.”