Kay Wilson

In memory of Kristine Luken

Kay Wilson, a British Israeli survivor of terrorism, came to my attention through her presence on social media, courageously speaking out against the Palestinian Authorities practice of paying terrorists a monthly stipend for murdering Jews; a practice indirectly supported by the British Government’s financial aid directed to the P.A, which is then diverted into funding terrorism.

Kay greeted me warmly at her home in Mevasseret Zion, just outside Jerusalem, her two beloved dogs at her heels. She was keen to speak to me in order to help victims of terrorism, although uncomfortable with attention following her survival from an attack in which her friend Kristine Luken was brutally murdered. Explaining she would rather be walking her dogs, she nevertheless recognises the need to ‘bear witness’ whilst addressing the continued funding of cold bloodied murderers.

I quickly warmed to Kay, she has an easy manner, and direct approach. She explained speaking about the attack brought up too much trauma; I could find out this information online as she had spoken and written about it many times. I was relieved, reluctant to take her back to that place, I had prepared myself with the facts prior to our visit: the dreadful details of which remained vivid in my imagination as I sat across from her, marvelling at her stoicism and incredible bravery.

Kay had been a tour guide. On December 18th 2010 she had been walking a beautiful nature trail in the Jerusalem Forest with her American Christian friend, Kristine Luken, when the pair where kidnapped, gagged, bound and brutally attacked with machetes by two Palestinian men who later confessed openly, they had come ‘to kill Jews’. Kirsten Luken was murdered. Kay, left for dead, somehow survived 13 stab wounds and over 30 broken bones. Determined not to die where she had been left, she dragged herself over a kilometre to find help. In hospital it had been an Arab doctor saved her life. Writing previously in a testimony included on the One Family Together website, Kay graphically, heart wrenchingly described the attack;

” Held captive to depravity I knelt, gagged and bound, and waited to be beheaded. I remember the fusion of the fragrant pines and the stench of bile trapped under the rag around my mouth. I remember hearing the songs of the birds and the terrified whimper of my friend. I remember a bright light; a machete glinting in the sun. Beauty and the beast, sanctity and savagery were the unfathomable backdrop of those moments, an eternal epoch that has not allowed, like other memories, for normative absorption with the passing of time.

I had never contemplated being brutally murdered. Who does? At only forty-six years old even death had barely crossed my mind. It was half an hour of madness so debilitating that even the moments necessary for preparing myself for death were strangled by the dread of the manner of my imminent execution. I recall looking to Heaven and begging the sun not to set, and seconds later witnessing the unthinkable: A human being hacked to death before my very eyes.

I was no longer afraid to die, but I was terrified of giving up. I wanted the police to find my body so that the sons of evil would be caught. I wanted to choose my own grave; I wanted that last autonomy. Somehow, gagged, bound, barefoot and bleeding to death, I managed to get up and walk a mile through the forest. I sustained thirteen machete wounds in my lungs and diaphragm, six compound fractures in my ribs, thirty additional fractures, a dislocated shoulder, a crushed sternum and a broken shoulder blade. I found no comfortable grave. Instead, surprisingly, I found help—a couple of families who saved my life.

Kristine Luken was robbed of her life and deprived of the final autonomy of choice that I was awarded. She was also pillaged of a natural demise surrounded by her loving family. Her death stole from her the dignity of dying in a pain-free manner, that basic mercy awarded to even the worst of convicted killers. The butcher’s knife chopped away the future generations of an innocent woman. It ripped apart her family’s heart and tore my innocence to shreds. His blows smashed my bones, slashed my flesh, decimated my soul and shredded the person that I once was.”

Returning to Kays living room, and the present, we continued our conversation. Terrorism is a huge issue in Israel, almost every Israeli has a connection to someone who has suffered devastation due to an attack.  There are people in Britain, in Scotland whose loved ones have been murdered in Israel. According to Kay, the P.A have received something in the region of 69 billion dollars of foreign aid a huge proportion of which is funnelled into terrorism.

Kay is not a stranger to life within the Palestinian Authority, together with Arab friends she travels there in secrecy as part of a counter radicalization project.

 She noted that despite the huge sums of money invested in the P.A. she had not seen one play park, decent clinic, or library.

“Where has all the money gone?  They have been held in perpetual victimhood….

I always say as an individual or as a collective, holding someone in perpetual victimhood is not kind, helpful, noble or true. That doesn’t empower anybody. None of my friends came to me after the murder and said ’Poor Kay! Your life is going to amount to nothing. Nobody said that. Instead they said, ‘one day at a time, you probably can’t guide very well in the future, but we will think about what else you can do’.

“Who wants to be told that they are a victim?, I’m not denying that people have been victims, but who wants to live in victimhood? I don’t believe that my life amounts to nothing because I’ve been in a terror attack”

Kay stressed the potency of words, explaining that if someone has lived through a terror attack, they are a survivor. Those who have been murdered are the victims.

“They say the devil is in the details- I prefer to say God is in the details, but if someone has died in a terror attack, they have been murdered, they haven’t been killed. We play around with this nuance, interchanging things and it dilutes the severity of what terrorism does….. “I’m very picky about the word victim and the word murder. If someone has died in a road accident they have been killed. In the ten commandments God doesn’t say ‘Thou shalt not kill, He says Thou shalt not murder.”

On the issue of Palestinian terrorism Kay is very clear “It’s not on both sides, it really isn’t. Its not a cycle of violence- its linear. If they stop trying to murder us, we will have peace, it’s really that simple”.

Speaking of her attackers, Kay explained that Kifah Ghanimat who murdered Kristine had also murdered Neta Blatt Sorek 10 months previously. During the attack in which Kristine had died, Kay managed to stab him; the DNA on her penknife led to his capture. He was also charged with 3 other attempted murders, he was a rapist, a thief, and had shot at the Army. His sentence was 120 years.

Ayad Fatafta, Kay’s attacker, was sentenced to 20 years for attempted murder and 35 years, - which in Israel is life in prison.  

Despite their convictions, Kay stressed the worry of prisoner exchange. Arnold Roth, father of 15-year-old Malki lives with the knowledge his daughters murderer was set free. Malka was murdered in the 2002 bombing of a Jerusalem restaurant along with 14 other civilians including many children. The perpetrator behind that attack, Ahlam Tamimi, received 16 life sentences but was later released in a prisoner exchange in which Israel released 1,027 convicted criminals (responsible for 569 Israeli deaths) in exchange for a young kidnapped soldier, Gilad Shalit.  

Although Kay stated she is not a politician, she has difficulty with the numerical imbalance. Prior to the attack she had worn a ‘Free Gilad Shalit’ arm band…”it was the motive. Who doesn’t hurt for that kid?” she observed, whilst reflecting that questions of this kind are now personal and she thinks more closely, no longer able to comment from afar, stressing these are very complex issues. “Its almost a no win for Israel- you know what I mean? Whatever we do we can’t win.”

Kay had been so severely injured she was on her back for almost 3 years, suffering from trauma so deep she blanked everything out. Completely numb, unable to relate to others she could not face visitors. Support came afterwards, with a changed circle of friends; “some understandably couldn’t cope with it asking ‘Where is the you that once was? ’ …. “some move away and its very painful, but then with that, some people you’ve never met before squeeze themselves in…”

Reflecting on how she has changed as a result of the attack, Kay offers important insights, in particular the ability she has gained to clarify moral issues on a personal level. Stressing that her experience is different to that of other survivors, she refuses to comment on their behalf, pointing out she doesn’t know what it is like to be shot, or blown up on a bus for example.

“What I do know is what it is like to have a knife with a foot long serrated blade, at my throat for half an hour, my fate unknown”, she states, referring to the terror of what seemed in one second to be imminent death, whilst in the next, the delusion that she might be released. This unimaginable scenario continued for an extended period of time.

Kay also was forced to watch the brutal murder of a friend. She walked back through the forest facing death at any moment, believing she had 10 minutes to live. She had to face the murderers in court- seated just 15ft away. She suffers survivors’ guilt (shared by most survivors), compounded by PTSD.  All facts which qualify her statement.

To give further context, during the 2014 Gaza war, Kay hid Arab teenager Mohammed Zoabi, in her house and was later approached by another for help. Together with a Palestinian friend, she has created “The Yellow Brick Road,” an educational, counter-radicalisation project, that teaches children in a refugee camp emotional intelligence, empathy and courage… things that ‘soften the heart’, and open up their world. She is reaching out to the Palestinian/Arab/Muslim community, and stresses that she does not have a racist bone in her body.  

Kay believes it is very important to continue to rage at what was done to her, reserving the right not to forgive her attackers and to hate their wickedness. Her anger is wholly directed at the perpetrators. This attitude has given her the freedom to help others without blurring the lines, enabling her to deal with the horror she endured whilst giving her amazing moral clarity.  

After Kristine’s murder, for the most part the Christian community offered Kay comfort. Jews however would approach her with the words, ‘May God avenge her blood!’ a statement she found incredibly empowering. Her anger was not directed at God for the attack- it was man that perpetrated the evil, but the understanding that God will act in justice, judgement and vengeance helped tremendously. “This whole idea of justice was very important to me; that I had to pursue justice legally. I had to direct my energy into legal ways of making sure that these people never come out. The idea that I could direct this unfairness, this cosmic event into something that would stop them getting out, that was amazingly important. This, and being careful about the language we used as I explained earlier. These things helped me mentally.”

Kay explained that she still lives with the consequences of that day, existing with continual physical pain in addition to the physical and mental scars.  “I wouldn’t want to deceive people; I still have very bad days, but I’m learning, when I have those days, I don’t fight it anymore, I don’t sit there crying with frustration. I have a bottle of wine and watch cartoons on You Tube and that’s all I can do. You come to know yourself better, you learn to pre-empt. Life is tricky”

Her attitude toward having suffered at the hands of such terrible evil was both humbling and confronting, although that was not her intent. “Some of the values, some of the things that I’ve really learnt is that I’m not the centre of the universe. When someone else suffered from a terror attack, I didn’t ask why them?  Trauma makes you think you are the centre of the world., but you realise you are not the centre of life. I don’t ask ‘why me- rather, why not me?….

…and if it’s not all about me, what is it all about?

I think that the way that Jews and Israel move through this ongoing war against our people is through community. Its not just about me… It’s through community. Israel and Jewish people have a collective psyche. They call it for what it is. They are not uncomfortable with terror and don’t shy away from addressing it.”  An incredible insight and selfless attitude from one who really could focus on her own incomprehensible suffering.

As a competant public speaker, Kay has addressed the attack many times. I asked her to summarize her motivation and her response was very clear;

“Firstly, we are supposed to bear witness” (mentioning the Holocaust); “We mustn’t forget, we must invoke their memory and alert the world to what evil does in order that we can act and put a stop to it. We must bear witness”

“Secondly, I want to bring goodness to Kristine’s memory, that’s really important”.

“Thirdly, it’s good to testify to the goodness of Israel. I’ve had people from every creed and colour in this community come to me Arabs, Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druze; they all see themselves as Israeli’s, and of late, and Palestinians have contacted me, its growing, its snowballing.”

Kay is in many ways is the bravest person I have ever met. She has recently published her first book, ‘The Rage Less Travelled- a Memoir of Surviving a Machete Attack’, available to buy on Amazon, written with raw honesty and incredible wit. She allows you to travel with her on the path few, if any have walked before… A dreadful path she was forced to take, and yet has elected to traverse as a survivor, not a victim.

Her moral choices along the way are an example to us all. I am certain she would not describe herself as a hero, still haunted by her friend’s murder, I found her to be keenly aware of her weakness and understated regarding her strength.  Kay was attacked for the sole reason that she was Jewish, and her response I have learned is also Jewish. She understands that it is for God to avenge. She is a fighter, relentless in the pursuit of justice. She has however, chosen life and mercy in response to hatred and death.