The Kansas City Star "KC Woman in Tel Aviv heard fatal shots

Published in Kansas City Star

A Kansas City resident who was in

Tel Aviv when Israel’s prime minister was assassinated there Saturday is afraid for her people.

Shoula Horing, 36, an Israeli citizen who has lived in Kansas City for about 14 years, opposes the peace process in Israel. She was born and raised in Tel Aviv, and she doesn’t trust the Palestine Liberation Organization.But Israel is supposed to be a democracy, and people are supposed to be allowed to differ with one another, she said Saturday night. The country, Horing said, crossed a line with the murder of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. “You (Americans) went through the Kennedy assassination and the Martin Luther King assassination,” she said. “We believe the Jews don’t kill other Jews. Particularly after the Holocaust. Jews don’t kill Jews. “This was the first time we crossed the line. This is the first time a Jew killed a Jew because he disagreed with him.”

Horing arrived in Israel on Thursday to attend to her mother, who had suffered a stroke. The peace rally that Rabin was attending when he was shot was next to Ichilov Hospital, where Horing’s mother is a patient. It was in Ichilov that Rabin died. Horing said she saw the throngs of people at the rally and heard the cheering. “It was a madhouse, this place,” she said. Then the crowd was quiet while participants sang a song of peace. After about 10 minutes of calm, Horing heard “a burst of noise.” A helicopter hovered above the hospital, and police sirens wailed. Doctors and nurses said Rabin had been shot. Horing said the country is in shock. “Everybody’s calling each other all night; people are lighting candles in the streets.” This is, she said, “the first disillusionment of a nation that believed that everything would be OK, that we were still one people.” The assassination will create distrust, she said, “and an enemy outside can

take advantage of it.”

Horing was 21 when she came to the United States on vacation and met her husband, Michael Horing, a law student. She studied at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and two years ago got her law degree. Michael Horing is an American citizen, as are the couple’s two children. But Shoula Horing has kept her ties to her native country. “I feel my loyalty should be to little Israel,” she said. Her five siblings, her parents and her other relatives live in Israel, and Horing visits yearly. She has written for the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle to express her dissatisfaction with the peace process, she said. “All the world was so happy and believed that the people of Israel were in a euphoria of peace,” she said. But Israel was divided 50-50 on the issue. And some people in Israel were saying Rabin was a traitor and “this was going to be the death and the end of Israel,” she said. I still don’t believe that peace is possible. Now I’m afraid for my people.”