The Israeli who supports release of jihadist who masterminded the attack that killed his family: ‘It is more important that the hostages return alive’

The life of Oran Almog resembles a tragedy in three acts. The latest is the release early February of Sami Jaradat, the main organizer of the Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ) attack that blinded Almog and killed his father, grandparents, a brother and a cousin in 2003. He has, however, chosen to “swallow” his pain and support Jaradat’s release because it was in exchange for three Israeli hostages. And because he found himself on the other side of the equation 14 months earlier, when four of his relatives kidnapped on October 7, 2023, were released in the first prisoner swap, this time in exchange for Palestinians who had done his family no harm. “[Jaradat’s] release pains me, but it brought home three hostages alive. And his remaining in prison was not going to bring me back my family,” he says at his home in Haifa, the northern Israeli city where Jaradat attacked his family when he was only 10 years old.

The attack in Haifa happened in the middle of the Second Intifada, on October 4, 2003. It was the Sabbath and the three generations of Almog’s family had gathered for lunch by the sea, as his grandfather, a former Navy commander, liked to do. They chose a well-known seaside restaurant, called Maxim, whose name today is still associated with the bombing. “We went in, sat down, ordered our food... and the next thing I remember I was lying on the floor,” he recalls.

Almog did not know then that Hanadi Jaradat, a 29-year-old Palestinian lawyer about to open a law firm, had decided to avenge the killing of her brother and uncle, Both PIJ members, by Israeli special forces in an undercover raid in the West Bank city of Jenin. Hanadi, who had also lost her fiancé to Israeli bullets years earlier, told her cousin, Sami Jaradat, that she was prepared to die in a “martyrdom operation.” Sami put her in contact with the person in charge of the explosives and she recorded a video claiming responsibility for the attack. Despite tighter security measures due to the approaching Yom Kippur holiday, Hanadi managed to cross from Jenin to Haifa and ended up entering the restaurant, pretending she was pregnant. She ordered food and blew the place up.

“Unfortunately, I didn’t pass out after the explosion, but I was dazed,” says Almog. “I remember the upside-down tables, the broken windows.... It was like a weird dream, a nightmare. I saw people bleeding to death all around me and the corpses of my relatives. Only later did I understand that they were dead. At the time, I simply saw that they were not responding. I felt very strongly that I had to get out of there. And although my eyes and my hand were injured and there was a lot of shrapnel in my body, I made it and they put me in the first ambulance, where I lost consciousness.”

Almog woke up a week later in hospital, where family members told him what had happened. “I was 10, so I wasn’t able to grasp the significance of death: that I would never again sleep at my grandparents’ house, or ride bikes with my uncle, or sneak in with my brother to watch TV, or jump up to hug my father when he came home from work. It took me a long time to figure it out. I was mostly focused on my personal survival, because I had a lot of injuries.” The scars are still visible on his face to this day.

When Almog regained consciousness, he could no longer see. An operation in the U.S. temporarily allowed him to distinguish colors and shadows, but the benefits didn’t last. He spent the next 20 years setting himself challenges: he was a bronze medalist in a world sailing championship for the blind, he gives talks in schools, companies, and public institutions on how to overcome adversity and invests in the financial and business sphere, especially tech start-ups applied to finance.

The second act of Almog’s tragedy — the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023 — happened just 20 years and three days later. One branch of his family, the Almog-Goldsteins, lived in Kfar Aza, a kibbutz on the border with Gaza. That morning, dozens of Hamas fighters stormed the kibbutz, killing 50 people and taking 19 hostages. Among the dead were two of Almog’s relatives. Four became captives.

“At first, we didn’t know whether they had been kidnapped, had managed to escape, or were in hiding,” he says. The last time they had seen each other was in the Haifa cemetery for the 20th anniversary of the Maxim bombing. “Suddenly the whole family was again embroiled in a difficult event. The same family that had been there for me, supporting me in the hospital, during rehabilitation, in mourning...”

Hamas released Almog’s four relatives 51 days later during the first Gaza ceasefire, which lasted just a week. It was, he says, “the happiest moment” of his life, and he gets emotional remembering his sister telling him on the phone, “I see them, they are alive, everything is fine.”

A bitter pill

Last month, Benjamin Netanyahu’s government approved the current ceasefire, the second phase of which looks increasingly difficult. Almog was discussing this with a friend, having a drink on a terrace — “not as a victim, but as just another Israeli citizen talking about politics, soccer, or dating.”

While he was there, he started receiving WhatsApp messages from contacts who had read the list of Palestinian prisoners to be released in the first phase. They flagged number nine: Sami Jaradat, given 21 life sentences for the 21 killed in the Maxim bombing. “Maybe I was naïve, but the possibility of him being on the list hadn’t occurred to me at all,” he says, primarily because he took it for granted that Hamas would give priority to the release of its own people as opposed to members of the PIJ.

“I was shocked and distressed. Because it was clear to me that he was never to get the punishment he deserved. The meaning of 21 life sentences was for him to end his days in prison. But then I asked myself if I really cared and what his release meant. And it became clear to me that what it meant was bringing back hostages alive and that was the most important thing — that him remaining in jail was not going to bring me back my family. I know firsthand how much joy a released hostage brings a family. And the day [Jaradat] came out [of prison], I saw what we received in return: Gadi [Mozes], Arbel [Yehoud] and Agam [Berger]. And it was worth it.”

Almog does not speak from a place of forgiveness, pacifism, or certainty. He describes it rather as the only alternative, poisonous as it is. “The [ceasefire] agreement seems to me to be terrible, very bad, and dangerous, because terrorists should be eliminated [killed, in Israeli military slang] or in jail. And we are releasing terrorists, with a very high probability that they will resume terrorist activity.”

But, he adds, “the alternative is worse. If there was another way to bring the hostages back, I would prefer it. But we have already seen that there isn’t.” Here, Almog is referring to the eight military rescues in the past 15 months, the failed ones — one hostage died in crossfire — and the fiascos; Israeli soldiers killed three hostages who were waving white flags and shouting in Hebrew, mistaking it for a Hamas trap.

Almog says that he supports the ceasefire deal both as a citizen in terms of the state’s responsibility, and “from the personal place” of a victim, in which his role now is to “swallow” his pain and “put it aside.” He laid this out first in a post on Instagram and then in an article in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper. He has also met with relatives of hostages who expressed a mixture of relief and emotion that he was okay with the deal. “It freed them from the feeling that I had to suffer because of them. I told them, ‘Focus on getting your families back and I will focus on [dealing with] my pain.’”

Almog insists that the real problems are yet to come. “It’s not so much what we do now, but later, to make sure that [those released with blood on their hands] will not return to terrorism and if the option exists, it is the last thing they choose.” The aim, he adds, is to avoid the “circle” that followed the 2011 swap for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, in which Netanyahu released 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, including Yahya Sinwar, who ended up masterminding the October 7 attacks and who was killed in combat in Gaza last year.

At present, the Maxim restaurant is full, even though everyone in Haifa knows its history. Almog says he tried going a couple of times but couldn’t enjoy it. “Having a pita with hummus there like it’s nothing... it’s very strange,” he explains. But he is not surprised it’s so popular. “It’s no small triumph not to let [terrorism] interrupt our lives.”

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