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CNN Live Sunday

Interview With Norman Greene

Aired August 04, 2002 - 17:08   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Another victim of Middle East violence was remembered today in Boston. Thirty-six-year-old Janis Coulter was one of five Americans killed in Wednesday's bombing at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She had arrived in Israeli on Tuesday with a group of graduate students. Coulter was killed when a bomb ripped through the Frank Sinatra cafeteria.

Marla Bennett was also one of the five Americans killed in that bombing. Last May, in an article for the San Diego Jewish Press Heritage weekly newspaper, Bennett wrote about her reasons for being in Israeli.

Bennett wrote: "My friends and family in San Diego are right when they call and ask me to come home. It is dangerous here. I appreciate their concern but there is nowhere else in the world I would rather be right now. I have a front row seat for the history of the Jewish people. I am part of the struggle for Israel's survival. Paying for my groceries is the same as contributing money to my favorite cause."

Norman Greene is a spokesperson for Bennett's family and he joins us now from San Diego. Thanks very much for joining us.

NORMAN GREENE, BENNETT FAMILY SPOKESPERSON: You're welcome.

WHITFIELD: How is the Bennett family doing?

GREENE: They're devastated. Marla was their pride and joy. They invested heavily in her emotionally and with love. She was the perfect child, the child that every parent hopes for.

WHITFIELD: Marla had been in school there for at least a year now. It was one thing, I imagine, for the family to read her words in the newspaper talking about her resilience, her resolve to want to stay there and find her purpose. Another thing now to read those very words published last May and essentially see how prophetic her words ended up being. Is that how you and the family have been seeing this?

GREENE: Well, Marla was an exceptional girl. She was actually in Israel for close to two years. She had just finished her second year at the Pardaze (ph) Institute at Hebrew University. She was very intelligent, a straight A student, the best, and she just believed, she was an ardent Zionist. She felt comfortable in Israel. She wanted to learn as much as she could. She studied in depth. She wanted to become a Jewish educator here in San Diego and she wanted to be able to express to the children here her joy and her history and her religion and in her people. Marla was also very idealistic. She felt that by being there she could help bring peace.

WHITFIELD: And she made that point very clear in that writing, but at the same time the point she made is that family and friends have been urging her to get out of there. So how far did family and friends want to take it to urge her that she needed to get out of that area?

GREENE: Marla was here. Marla was here in March visiting with her family and we all, I'm not a family member but I've known her since birth, and we all urged her to come home, take a semester off, take a break while everything was so hot and hostile, while the Palestinians were trying to liquidate the State of Israel, and every Jew in it.

We said "you don't need to be there now," but she felt she did and she felt that she could be safe enough, particularly at a university where there were Arab students, Jewish students from all over the world, Israeli Jews. You know what safer place, what more harmless place? Certainly the university wasn't harboring Israeli politicos or Israeli war machine.

These were Jewish intellectuals learning, studying, and of course they, as well as the young people at the disco and the bus stop and at the supermarket and in the plazas and cafes, they're the targets of Hamas and the other radical terrorists. They're murderers. They want to kill Jews. They want to kill Israelis.

WHITFIELD: Is it your feeling that particularly this latest killing involving the five Americans at the Hebrew University should inspire other American parents whose children are going to work or other families who are living in Israel that this may inspire these parents to try and urge their loved ones to get out of that region?

GREENE: You know we all tried with Marla, her 94-year-old grandmother, her parents, loving, loving parents, but we felt that Marla was 24 years old, that she was a young adult, that she had to make her own decisions in life and she knowingly put her own life at risk by being there.

But think about it, why should anyone, anyone, be at risk studying at a university? I mean who are they harming, studying at a university? So she felt in that sense she was safe. She wasn't frivolous. She didn't go to discos. She didn't go to restaurants. As she said in the article published in "The Heritage," she looked to the right. She looked to the left. Whenever she left she varied the way she went to class every day.

You know this wasn't a girl who was out looking for trouble. This was a serious-minded, beautiful human being who wanted peace, who wanted joy, who wanted understanding in the world, and I suppose she's paid for her liberal outlook.

WHITFIELD: Norman Greene, thank you very much and our condolences. Please pass them on to the Bennett family.

GREENE: I will. Thank you.

WHITFIELD: Thanks for joining us.

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