⁴³Rejoice with him, you heavens, bow down, all you gods, before him; for he will avenge the blood of his sons and take vengeance on his adversaries; he will punish those who hate him and cleanse his people’s land.

Deuteronomy 32: 43 – The Revised English Bible

¹⁹My dear friends, do not seek revenge, but leave a place for divine retribution; for there is a text which reads, ‘Vengeance is mine, says the Lord, I will repay. ²⁰But there is another text: ‘If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him a drink; by doing this you will heap live coals on his head.

Romans 12: 19-20 – The Revised English Bible

⁹Let love be unfeigned; abhorring the evil; clinging to the good.

Romans 12: 9 – The Keys of the Kingdom Holy Bible

³⁶’It is different now,’ he said; ‘whoever has a purse had better take it with him, and his pack too; and if he has no sword, let him sell his cloak to buy one. ³⁷For scripture says, “And he was reckoned among transgressors,” and this, I tell you, must be fulfilled in me; indeed, all that is written of me is reaching its fulfilment.’ ³⁸‘Lord’, they said, ‘we have two swords here.’ ‘Enough!’ he replied.

Luke 22: 36-38 – The Revised English Bible

¹²The Lord has eyes for the righteous, and ears open for their prayers; but the face of the Lord is set against wrongdoers.

1 Peter 3: 12 – The Revised English Bible

Photo of Kay Wilson/Tal Hartuv courtesy of The Examiner News

I first came across Kay Wilson some months ago. Having subsequently read her book ‘The Rage less Traveled’, I was certain that I wanted to write something here about her and her case. The fact that this piece has taken so long to write is merely a reflection of the fact that I’ve been unsure whether I was capable of doing justice to her story, and her quite astonishing book.

Firstly, let me share the bare facts. On December 18^th, 2010, Kay, who was born in the UK but has lived in Israel for some 40 years and is now known by her Jewish name Tal Hartuv, took a visiting American tourist called Kristene Luken to a well-known tourist spot between Gaza and Jerusalem called Betogabri, with the specific purpose of Tal teaching Kristene how to identify ancient Jewish pottery. At this time, Tal was a Jewish tour guide and Kristene was Christian, but with a fascination for all things Jewish.

At a particular moment in their walk, Tal became aware that two men were hiding in the bushes, not far below them. The men were Kifah Ghanimat and Iyad Fatafteh. Ghanimat had, on a previous rampage, raped and humiliated a woman at knife point, having entered Israel illegally, burgled a house, stole a gun and tried to shoot Jews….any Jews. On this 2010 occasion, the two men had again entered Israel illegally and after their arrest, they informed Police that their sole purpose was again to kill as many Jews as possible. For these two men, killing Jews was not an abnormal act, but more a sacred duty. We only need to pause for a moment and wonder what our world would be like, if such people made up the majority.

Seconds later, as the two women tried to get back to their car, they were savagely attacked from behind. Tal’s attacker, Iyad Fatafteh, had a serrated knife a foot long; his accomplice Kifah Ghanimat had a huge, curved kitchen knife. The two women were bound and gagged and then stabbed repeatedly. While doing this, the men shouted: ‘Allahu Akbar!’ Kristene screamed: ‘Jesus help me, Jesus please help me!’ Tal cried out ‘Shema Israel!.’ The Shema prayer is at the core of Judaism and starts with the words: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.’

Tal was stabbed from behind, resulting in 13 lacerations to her lungs and diaphragm. She suffered 6 open compound fractures of her ribs. Some ribs were splintered into her lungs. Her sternum was broken in two places, underlining the savagery of the attack. She was then turned onto her back and stabbed brutally in the chest; her aorta was missed by four millimetres. After a while, she plucked up the courage to look towards Kristine, whose attacker had hacked and cleaved at her, whilst she was lying on her back, resulting in what Tal described as a ‘soggy mass of maroon in the bushes.’ Kristene was already dead at this point, and Tal was certain she would shortly follow her, but was feigning death, in order to avoid further blows. The murderers left, and somehow, amazingly, Tal managed to get to her feet and walk a whole mile back to the Car Park. She was then picked up by helicopter and by some miracle survived, thanks to the ministrations on a Muslim hospital doctor.

Those are the facts, but there are issues that it’s impossible to ignore, arising from these.

The first issue is that the murderers shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ (‘Allah is the Greatest’) at the moment of their total, ruthless, brutal, barbaric and cowardly attack. Can there possibly be any greater insult to, and rejection of everything that God stands for, than to suggest that these murderers’ attack on two completely innocent women would be applauded and praised by their God? I don’t find it difficult to say that if this is a true reflection of Allah (and I don’t believe that it is) then without a hint of doubt or hesitation, I totally reject their ‘God’ as an inhuman monster. This issue is admirably covered by the Ten Commandments, that Jews and Christians share;

‘The Lord will not leave unpunished anyone who misuses his name’ (Exodus 20:7b).

The thought that some Islamic terrorists actually believe that they will be rewarded by Allah for such acts of barbarity, in my opinion totally negates any ‘faith’ that they claim to have.

Secondly, can there ever, possibly be any mitigating circumstances for such brutality? I’ve been horror-struck by the fact that we now, apparently, have people on the streets of London who believe that the events of October 7^th 2023, which included multiple atrocities like this and even worse, try to excuse such events as ‘acts of resistance’. I doubt that anyone who has read this blog so far will have any sympathy with this; but if they do, they need to ponder the fact that not only were the victims totally innocent women, but one of them was not even Jewish, but Christian. Did the murderers care that Kristene was not Jewish? They found Kristene’s passport in Tal’s bag before the attack and knew that she was an American tourist.

In Matthew 13:49-50, there is a depiction of the Last Judgement, when there will be ‘wailing and grinding of teeth.’ I’ve previously written in these pages that this might refer to the effect of conscience, when after death you have to realise the enormity of what you have done; see:

Does the light really shine in the deepest darkness?

Did this at any stage touch the two murderers? No. They showed no remorse, no regret and no fear of punishment. In short, they showed no hint of conscience and even smirked, when Kristene’s father later gave evidence at their trial.

How are we meant to react to these events? In recent years, we have increasingly become a country and a Church that chooses not to condemn unequivocally such acts. But what should we think, as Christians? Did Christ teach pacifism in every case? I’ve recently underlined that often we miss the true meaning of parts of the Bible, such as ‘turn the other cheek.’ See the same blog referenced above.

When I first heard Tal Hartuv speak, I was struck by the fact that she said that she wasn’t at liberty to forgive Kristene’s death for, in her view, only the murdered person can forgive this and obviously Kristene is not here to do that. It was Tal who first alerted me to the fact that the Sixth of the Ten Commandments does not say as I had been taught:

‘Thou shalt not kill.’ (Exodus 20:13)

That is the translation in the King James Version, but all of the four other translations on my shelves use ‘murder’ instead of ‘kill.’ The Hebrew word is ratsach, which specifically refers to intentional, premeditated, unlawful taking of human life. I’m embarrassed that I’d never noticed this before Tal pointed it out. It’s one of those subtle translation issues that we really should be more aware of.

Through this and other Biblical sayings, I was brought up to believe that Jesus was a pacifist, teaching that all violence is wrong. But also, I firmly believe that you cannot properly understand Jesus without embracing the fact that he was a proud Jew. There’s little doubt that not all parts of our Christian Bible give a uniform view, but the Jewish Tanakh gives a more consistent meaning and one that is, crucially, more robust. Has Christianity lost all robust teaching? It sometimes feels that it has lost its moral compass and has rejected its Jewish roots.

Tal believes that the correct teaching is that we are not taught to tolerate evil; in fact, the quotations I’ve included above, show the precise opposite. Retaliation and revenge is not approved, for the simple reason that vengeance belongs to God alone in both Judaism and Christianity, but this does not mean that we should accept violence and murder against innocents, nor that we should tolerate evil. Often when I listen to other Christians, I come away with the feeling that some parts of the Church no longer recognise that evil even exists.

I have come to love the Psalms deeply. One of the reasons for this is that the Psalms often cry out to the Lord about injustice. They do not encourage violence against those who carry out evil or barbaric deeds. They often call for vengeance, but by God, not man. Biblical peace is peace through God’s justice, not peace at any price. It is impossible to separate the Bible from Justice; it is one of the most fundamental of all Biblical values.

When I first communicated with Tal, I was convinced that she was the strongest woman that I had ever come across. And I still believe that her book is the story of an incredible woman who has survived, not only to tell her story, against all the odds, but also to come to terms with what her experiences mean. It is, very understandably, a story of someone who has been tortured with guilt for Kristene’s death, as she was responsible for acting as a guide to Kristene, but Tal was the only one who lived. What makes her story very special is that she focuses much on correct Jewish and Christian teaching, not on the watered-down version that Anglicanism has slowly but inexorably slid into, over my lifetime. She was, for example, comforted, after her survival, when a visitor used the Jewish phrase concerning Kristene: ‘May God avenge her blood.’ (This originates from Deuteronomy 32:43). Her uncompromising outright rejection of evil was what drew me to Tal’s writings in the first place. How and why have we become so averse to rejecting evil? Might this be one reason why so many have drifted away from the Church?

Tal has an excellent understanding of Christianity and sometimes reflects ‘robust’ Christian teaching in her story. For example, when during the court case she finds it difficult to endure the arrogant self-satisfaction of her attackers, she blows Fatafteh a lingering and deliberately exaggerated kiss. This, in the words of St Paul quoted above, heaped live coals upon his head and enraged him. Reading that page brought a warm smile to my face. This surely is both a Biblical and a Christian response to those who refuse to acknowledge the evil that they have done?

The Court sentenced Kristene’s killer to 2 life sentences plus 60 years for the murder of Kristene Luken, to be served consecutively. Tal’s attacker was sentenced to life plus 20 years, also consecutive, for her attempted murder. In 2017, President Trump, in his first term, ordered the Department of Justice to take action to ensure that neither man would be released under any prisoner swap, but would instead be sent to stand trial in the United States. For some reason that I have been unable to discover however, Iyad Fatafteh was released in October 2025, in an Israeli/Palestinian prisoner swap, and not sent to the USA. When last heard of, he was living in luxury in Egypt. I can’t even begin to think of what this must feel like to Tal.

In addition, both men receive payments under the so-called ‘Pay to Slay’ Palestinian Authority law, which rewards those who have killed Jews (yes, really, and please bear in mind that this is the Palestine that Keir Starmer disgracefully recognised as a state in September of last year). At the time Tal wrote her book in 2020, each man had received payments valued at $70,000 and had qualified to be paid $3,410 per month for the rest of their lives.

I have no hesitation in saying that this disgusts and appals me. What is worse is that the British Government has been paying a large contribution to the Palestinian Authority, which is helping to fund the ‘Pay to Slay’. This is the act of an immoral state that has lost its way. Tal has written to every MP in the UK House of Commons and only six even bothered to acknowledge receipt. She has offered her story to most UK mainstream media and has been refused by all, including the BBC in March 2019.

I hope you will decide to read Tal’s book (published by Gefen Publishing House Ltd in 2020). It does not do it justice to say that it is inspirational, tear-jerking and hilariously funny in turns. She has a fantastic way with words; her style is at once disarming and poetic. In places, her writing is so incredibly personal that it feels like being inside her head. More than one page made me both cry and laugh. This may not be a book that you would wish to take to a desert island, but it is a remarkable work that you really should read, if you wish to come to grips with the nature of evil in our world.  

Heavenly Father, please grant us the wisdom and courage to reject evil in all its forms. And when these evil men have to face you at their death, we pray that you will avenge Kristene’s death and the scars, both physical and mental, with which Tal has to live daily. We pray that you will make these monsters suffer for the enormity of what they have done, with much ‘weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth.’ Amen

PS I am grateful to Tal for her permission to tell her story here.