“I wouldn't do it again”: this is how Shmuel Peleg, grandfather of little Eitan, the only survivor of the Mottarone massacre, about the blitz with which he brought his grandson to Israel in recent months.
"What I knew then is not what I know now - he explains in an interview taken by the press agencies -. Only during the trial in Israel did the decree emerge that established expatriation only if accompanied by Aya. At that moment I had in front of me a child I wanted to save because I was not given any guarantee of collaboration with us on decisions about his future ".
The grandfather then explains that he is "very" afraid of being arrested: "The thing that pains me most is that I cannot see Eitan". On the decision to appoint a third guardian, he comments: "It gives us a first hope". "I trust in the Italian judicial system that it will now take care of his good - he adds - I have the hope within me that they can consider it a humanitarian case, of a grandfather who loves his grandson. I hope I will be given the opportunity to see him".
And speaking of the sentence pronounced shortly after the "kidnapping" and reported by the Israeli media, "when Eitan grows up he will say that I saved him", he specifies: "I do not claim that Aya hurt him or did not take care of him. the very fact that he wanted to limit the contacts between Eitan and us or exclude us from the choices that concern him, as he did from the beginning, is not in my nephew's interest. "
"Eitan - argues Peleg - is an Israeli child, Jewish, here he has his roots and a branched family". Is a reconciliation with the Biran possible? "Difficult to think now. But a third party, after the Italian courts determine what the child's best interest is, will have to mediate and verify how both families can stand beside him", he concludes.
(Unioneonline / vl)
