But in an
incredible display of a bottomless will to live, Kay Wilson – with thirteen
machete wounds, a crushed sternum, multiple rib fractures, bone splinters in
her lungs, a dislocated shoulder and broken shoulder blade – got up and walked
over a mile barefoot, bound, and bleeding until she reached help. She survived
to testify against her assailants in court. The reason the pair was caught was that
Wilson had managed to stab one in the groin with a penknife during the assault,
and investigators linked him to the DNA in his blood on her clothing. The two
monsters, who were convicted of other crimes as well, including stabbing
another Jewish woman to death earlier that same year, were imprisoned for life.
The Rage Less Traveled: A Memoir of Surviving
a Machete Attack is Kay Wilson’s relentlessly gripping, intensely
personal story. You can find it on
Amazon here (and here
on audiobook) where the book has racked up dozens of exclusively 5-star
reviews. Simultaneously raw and poetic, transcendent and unsentimental, The Rage Less Traveled is not a predictable
book about learning to forgive your attackers or seeking interfaith dialogue
with members of a Jew-hating ideology. The book acknowledges that evil exists
and that there can be no coexistence with it. It is a story about the tortuous
road through survival into the light. As Wilson said in her 2019 AIPAC address, “My story is
Israel’s story.”
Ms. Wilson kindly
agreed to answer some questions about the book and her shocking experience.
Mark Tapson: You wrote that the media’s initial
explanation for the attack on you and your friend Kristine Luken was that it
was in retaliation for Israel’s assassination of a Hamas commander. But what
was the real reason?
MT: Having
your terrorists imprisoned wasn’t the end of the ordeal for you, because when
the news broke that the kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit might come home
through a prisoner exchange, you feared that your assailants might be among
those released. Can you give us your thoughts on such prisoner exchanges and
the mixed feelings you had about this one in particular?
KW: It’s easy to
express glib yet sincere opinions until the implications of a political
decision actually happens to you. Politics that touch deeply our lives is far
more complex than just facts or expressing an opinion. Hence, I was both
thrilled and moved for Corporal Schalit and his parents, yet conversely
terrified and resentful that the exchange of cold-blooded murderers for his
release, may include the people who attacked me. The
release opened up my world to the incalculable suffering of
those who have had their loved ones murdered. For a change,
it wasn’t just all about me.
I am not a
politician, or a leader, or have access to all the intelligence that is needed
to reach a decision concerning prisoner exchanges or any
other decisions. With that said, and with emotions aside, to me it is
clear: releasing un-remorseful terrorists who are bent on doing their same
deeds again, not only leaves more families bereaved, but is politically counter-productive
because it encourages future kidnappings.
MT: On
the book’s website you note that every publisher to whom the book was submitted
acknowledged that it is extremely well-written and “a page-turner,” but none
had the guts to publish it. You mention that one publisher in particular had
the nerve to suggest something rather outrageous about the book. Can you tell
us about that?
KW: Firstly, I was
encouraged and frankly flattered that every major New York publisher said it
was beautiful written and a page-turner. That is a compliment. I had to
work very hard at writing. Writing doesn’t come naturally to me. Every
word, comma and colon felt like hell. This one publisher rejected my book
on this basis that I did not talk about my “subsequent charitable work for
young and impoverished Palestinians.” Because of this, they
said, “I’m sorry to say then, I am going to pass on this one.”
I was working with
an agent so I had no direct contact, but I would have liked to tell them a few
things. Firstly, my memoir, like all memoirs, is about the author and not
about other people. Secondly, have they never heard of a second book? From
a professional and literary point of view, who I am now and what I am doing now
has a different tone, weight and voice, to
the unspeakable trauma and hell I have gone through for years. It
would have been completely inappropriate to put that in my memoir.
Thirdly, to use the “young and impoverished Palestinians,” on the back of
me being butchered nearly to death in which I witnessed a woman chopped up
before my eyes because her executioners thought she was Jewish, is frankly
obscene. Clearly, what happened to us doesn’t fit into their
narrative of the "brutal Israeli occupation” and the “cycle of violence.”
These people are
virtue-signalers and cowards. If I would have been a trans, black, Muslim
Palestinian, who had been attacked by white Jewish settlers, there is
no reason my book would be on the bestsellers list. It is written
well, readable, a page-turner, my story of survival is off the charts, and
at the most basic level, facing death as I have, is a matter of curiosity for
people. Facing death is a subject that sells.
MT: In
the book’s epilogue you note that the Palestinian Authority (PA) pays out
salaries to thousands of incarcerated terrorists, including your assailants,
and that these rewards come from funds donated by foreign governments,
including the UK. What has been the official response to your efforts to put a
stop to this practice?
KW: Together with scrupulous and tireless work
of Palestinian Media Watch, I have had the privilege of being instrumental in
the Dutch government reducing their foreign aid by 7% to the PA (the sum they
take from their general budget to pay the murderers’ salaries). We are working
on other European countries now and see some remarkable progress.
As a dual citizen
of both Israel and the United Kingdom, I lobbied the British government as an
individual. I sent a letter to every single MP [Member of Parliament] along
with photos of my gruesome injuries, yet only a handful replied, expressing the
“British government’s commitment to a two-state solution.” I was not writing
them about a two-state solution. I was writing to tell them that my own family
in England are paying my would-be murderers a salary from their taxes. There
are MP’s who have knowing mislead parliament and continue to lie about where
the foreign aid ends up. I am disgusted by the British
government. Clearly, with immoral politics such as this, and a total
disregard for evil, Great Britain is hardly “great” anymore.
From Frontpage Mag, 5/23/19
