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Seattle Federation Shooting: One Year Later

Last Friday marked the first anniversary of the most traumatic day in the history of Seattle's Jewish community. It was the day that a deranged Naveed Haq barged into the Jewish federation's downtown offices, proclaimed his anger at Israel for … Read More

By / August 4, 2007

Last Friday marked the first anniversary of the most traumatic day in the history of Seattle's Jewish community. It was the day that a deranged Naveed Haq barged into the Jewish federation's downtown offices, proclaimed his anger at Israel for its treatment of Arabs, and began shooting everything in sight. At the end of his rampage Pam Waechter, the campaign director was dead and five other female employees were wounded. The hatred and insanity of this massacre are garden variety as far as the world is concerned–this happens every day. But what isn't garden variety is this community's response, including the victims and the family of the perpetrator.

Seattle is a city that prides itself on its openness and tolerance and it proved it in this case. On the day of Pam Waechter's funeral an Arab-American representative of Haq's family hand delivered a letter from Haq's parents expressing profound sorrow and regret to the Jewish community. The victims, in turn, did not shout for vengeance or the death penalty. In fact, several victims families said explicitly and publicly that they did not the DA to file a death penalty charge.

The most severely injured victim was Layla Bush with bullet wounds to her abdomen and shoulders. One bullet barely missed tearing into her heart. She walks with a cane, cannot stand for more than an hour and has nine therapy appointments each week. Yet these are her feelings now:

"I just don't want people to forget how much damage hate can do…Nothing positive comes from hatred." Bush said executing Haq would be "too easy for him." She reiterated that view Thursday, saying she favored life imprisonment.

In the aftermath of the shooting, "what made me mad is not him, but that someone with a mental history like that can get guns…" Growing up in rural Florida, she completed gun-safety classes and shot beer bottles off fence posts. She once owned a 9 mm Beretta. "I feel that handguns are made for killing people," she said. "They're not made for hunting."

Think what an extraordinary attitude it takes to make the following statement about her volunteer work at Harborview Medical Center:

We answer questions and talk with patients who have just been recently injured," she said. "It feels good for me to just give back. I feel like I've taken so much."

Norm Maleng, the recently deceased Republican DA did not file a first degree murder charge. He reviewed ten years of Haq's mental health records and determined that a lesser murder charge was more appropriate.

While one might expect the victims of such a trauma to refuse to return to their jobs almost all have (though several cannot work full time due to their injuries). The federation in turn has raised $1.3 million to entirely redesign the interior of its former offices so that the thoughts of victims or any other community member will not linger on that tragic day and space.

It seems to me that there are many places in the world where hate rages which could learn from Seattle's example. It is true that shootings of this nature are extremely rare here so one might argue that we have the luxury of being able to respond to such tragedy differently. But are we really that different? I don't know. It seems to me that a response to murderous hatred that offers more of the same is the easy way out. A response to hate that offers sober reflection and emotional engagement is much harder.

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  • Anonymous

    “Who knows Layla’s views better, you or her mother?”

    I’d say Layla herself is the best authority on her own views.

    Richard, your response here is a perfect example of talking around the issue. I simply quoted Ms. Bush as saying that death would be too good for her assailant. You can put that comment through whatever Procrustean contortions you’d like, but I’m afraid that there is no way to understand it but that the alternative (imprisonment) would be more painful and therefore, by her lights, preferable. Put another way, if death is too good, it follows that imprisonment would be less good for him. How would it be less good? I make the tiny leap here that if the victim of a crime says that killing her assailant would be too good for him, she wishes that he endure the greater pain of hopeless, lifelong imprisonment. Sorry if this doesn’t comport with your Manichean notions of heroism, but there you are.

    Trotting out her parents’ comments is entirely beside the point. I think their sentiments are noble and admirable, and we’d live in a kinder world if it were peopled by such folks. But we have to look at Ms. Bush’s own words. As I demonstrated (pretty decisively, if I do say so), she appears to have wished for her assailant’s comeuppance to be more painful rather than less.

    As I think about it, it also seems to me that it’s both Pollyanish and patriarchal to assume that the parents of an adult woman would be the final arbiters of her state of mind.

  • richards1052

    "she also wishes maximum pain to her assailant. Why must we bowdlerize that part of her reaction?"

    Her statement, which you quote, is far from saying what you claim it does. She does not wish "maximum pain" upon him. She is certainly entitled to hate her assailant. But she speaks nothing about wishing to inflict pain on him.

    In fact, Layla's parents publicly said that neither she nor they wanted the DA to attempt to impose the death penalty because they didn't believe taking Haq's life would do anything for the victims:

    "She [Layla Bush] probably would not be angry at the individual (who did this,)" Kathryn Bush [her mother] said. "If anything, she'd be angry at the causes, perhaps not enough funding for the mentally ill."

    "It would take somebody who was mentally ill to do this," her father said. "But the world situation probably pushed him (the suspect) over the edge."

    "I don't feel any blame or anger toward him (the shooter,)" her mother said. Both parents called for tolerance.

    "I don't want to put any prejudice, or harassment of the Muslim community here, especially of the family of the shooter," her father said. "They (the suspect's family) must be going through hell right now."

    Who knows Layla's views better, you or her mother?

    Richard Silverstein

    Tikun Olam (blog)

  • Anonymous

    Am I being churlish to note that Ms. Bush’s reason for not wanting her assailant executed was that it would be “too good for him”? I’m not sure how this constitutes the triumph of judiciousness over vengeance, are you?

    Please note that I’m not blaming Ms. Bush for her wishes. I myself would be happy to see my assailant suffer if I were in her shoes. Not proud of that, but facts are facts.

    For some reason, we’re inclined to impute heroic motives to those with whom we empathize. She suffered, she’s trying to make the best of it and doing some good for others-praiseworthy for sure. But she also wishes maximum pain to her assailant. Why must we bowdlerize that part of her reaction?

  • Benjamin Kerstein

    That the easy way out would have been for the employees to be armed so they could have killed or incapacitated their assailant before he had the chance to kill or injure anyone.  Or perhaps this would be barbaric…c'est la vie.