Terror victim’s son: Expel Palestinian scouts for honoring my father’s killer

The son of an American-Israeli man killed in a Palestinian attack last year says he has asked the global scout movement to expel its Palestinian branch after local members dedicate a recent training course to one of his father’s killers.

Micah Lakin Avni says the Palestinian scout branch is violating the world movement’s core ideals.

“The scouts has really been for more than a century an international, nonpartisan organization dedicated to teaching kids to be good citizens of their neighborhood, of their world,” Avni says. “Tragically, they are teaching their kids to hate and be violent.”

A Palestinian scout troop in East Jerusalem held a training course last week that was dedicated to Baha Alyan — one of two Palestinian attackers who shot and stabbed passengers on a Jerusalem bus last October.

Avni’s father, Richard Lakin, was among three people killed in the attack. Alyan was killed by a security guard, while a second assailant survived and is now serving a life sentence in an Israeli prison.

Palestinian scout leader Ahmed Mashahreh says Alyan was active for many years in the scouting movement and that the recognition had nothing to do with the bus attack.

“This had nothing to do with politics,” Mashahreh says. “During his lifetime, Baha was very active in scout activities. That’s why we picked his name, not because of what he did on the last day of his life.”

— AP