Mother of bank killer defends son, mourns victims
Itamar Alon was ‘good, decent, honest,’ but ‘my pain right now is not for my son; it is for those families,’ says Hanna Alon
Hanna Alon, the mother of Itamar Alon who murdered four people at a bank in Beersheba on Monday, said she did not understand what could have motivated her son to go on a shooting spree.
In a telephone interview with Channel 2 News Tuesday, the weeping mother vacillated between complaining that the public was “trashing” her deceased son and saying that her pain was not as much for Itamar Alon as for the families of his victims.
“In this country, that’s what people know how to do.” she said. “They trash the people who are good, decent, honest… Let them! Let them trash a dead man!”
She also talked about her son’s accomplishments during his service with the Border Police, and mentioned that he had achieved the rank of captain. “I’m proud of him,” she said, “but what he did to those families is such a shame.”
While stopping short of justifying her son’s actions, Alon did take the bank to task for pushing him to repay his debts.
“He deposited so much money, his father was constantly giving him checks,” she said. “And over NIS 6,000 ($1,600) they close the account of an unemployed man?”
Nevertheless, she said, she had no indication that her son was in such dire financial straits, despite his inability to find work for two and a half years.
“If he had told me ‘Mom, I need money’… I would have given him double the amount on the spot,” she lamented.
Alon also mourned her son’s victims and the pain endured by their families.
“My boy… I don’t know what happened to him that he would destroy those families,” she said. “My pain right now is not for my son; it is for those families… whose loved ones were taken from them for no reason.”
Of the four people that Itamar Alon killed, one, assistant bank manager Meir Zeitoun, was buried on Monday evening. The remaining three — bank manager Avner Cohen, and customers Anat Ben-Haim and Idan Savri — were laid to rest on Tuesday.