Head of the Mandell foundation ‘heartsick’ at terror against ‘those who are the most vulnerable’

Sherri Mandell, Tekoa resident and head of the Kobi Mandell Foundation — established in memory of her son who was murdered in a terror attack when he was 13 — says that she and the foundation “are heartsick and angry at what is happening in our country.

“Yesterday Dafna Meir, a mother of six, knifed to death in front of her children; and today Michal Froman, a young pregnant mother knifed while she was working at a used-clothing charity shop in Tekoa,” she continues.

“We live in Tekoa. Our son Koby was 13 when he was murdered here with his friend Yosef Ish Ran in 2001. The two boys cut school and were beaten to death with rocks in a cave in the canyon near our home,” she says.

“We hoped that terror had stopped,” adds Mandell. “But Arab murderers are still being incited to hunt the young and the defenseless, children like Koby and Yosef, women like Dafna Meir who are unarmed. Women who are taking care of children or are pregnant. The Palestinians are being incited to kill those who are most vulnerable.

“Unfortunately, our enemy will write about these attacks as acts of Palestinian courage and resistance. Others will justify these acts as resistance. Or a response to despair,” she continues.

But these acts, says Mandell, are part of an “orchestrated strategy” to destroy the Jewish people. “They are not lone-wolf attacks. First in September the Palestinians concentrated their murderous activity in the Old City of Jerusalem, and then they were urged to kill on the roads in Hebron and Kiryat Arba and Gush Etzion, and now they are being encouraged to infiltrate settlements,” she continues, according to a statement from the foundation.

“This strategy is doomed and will not bring peace. It will only bring further Palestinian suffering,” adds Mandell.