ISRAELIS MURDERED BUT PROCESS GOES ON

JNW HEADLINE NEWS

'We will continue'Kadima-weighted Knesset sworn in as more Israelis die
By Stan Goodenough April 17th, 2006

Israel’s newly elected Knesset (parliament), voted in 20 days ago, and the majority of whose members are preparing to proceed with the division of the biblical Land of Israel, was sworn in Monday afternoon. The ceremony got underway less than two hours after a 20-year-old Arab terrorist, enabled and motivated by the land-for-peace process, murdered nine Israelis in a
"suicide" attack in Tel Aviv. Despite the carnage, chief Oslo architect and former Prime Minister Shimon Peres told CNN the 17th Knesset swearing in would proceed as planned.

"Never did a day or war or terror stop the process of democracy. We shall continue. And so they did. Israelis watched their television screens split into two scenes. On the one side came coverage from the bloody and shattered streets of Tel Aviv, where shocked faces of some of the bombing victims could still be seen, and the toll of dead went from six, to seven, to eight.On the other, scenes streamed in from the dignified, trumpet-heralding parliament building, where smiling, smartly-dressed Knesset members made their way into the plenum and took their seats.

The feelings of some MKs, however, were that the ceremony should be postponed. Said Shas Party Chairman Eil Yishai: This is not a day for celebrating. The Knesset must feel the fear that the people, who are traveling throughout the country, are feeling on [the Passover holiday]. I am honored to open the first session of the 17th Knesset," President Moshe Katsav said in
his opening address, after which Peres, who directed the ceremony, stopped to "say a word."
Echoing what he had told CNN earlier, he raised his voice and leveled it at the packed plenum. It never happened, he almost shouted, that the democratic process in Israel was stopped by terror or war or violence. For him, democracy should not be disrupted, not even in memory or out of respect for the dead.

An hour later, the death toll went to nine as yet another wounded person succumbed.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------