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Mystery shrouds Palestinian’s last act atop Empire State

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Message: If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/5200/full/5200/mystery-shrouds-palestinian-s-last-act-atop-empire-state/ Mystery shrouds Palestinian’s last act atop Empire State Friday, February 28, 1997 | by MITCHELL DANOW But now there are questions, and some may go unanswered. In the immediate aftermath of Sunday's shooting of seven people—one fatally—New York City investigators said the 69-year-old Palestinian acted alone and that personal misfortune, not Middle East politics, motivated the senseless crime. But police officials later confirmed that they had found on Kamal—who turned his 14-shot Beretta pistol on himself at the end of his rampage—letters in Arabic and English in which he said he planned his attack as revenge against the United States, Israel and others. "The Zionists are the paw that carried out their savage aggression," the New York Times quoted his letter as saying. "My restless aspiration is to murder as many of them as possible, and I have decided to strike at their own den in New York…" Abu Kamal identified four groups of "bitter enemies" who he said must be "annihilated & exterminated" for political and personal misdeeds against him and his family. The letters, which officials described as bitter and rambling, also lashed out at Zionism, prompting the question of whether there had been a political motive for the mass shooting. But the letters also referred to two unnamed business partners whom Kamal accused of swindling him out of his life savings. Kamal's gun killed Christoffer Burmeister, a 27-year-old guitarist for the Bush Pilots, a Danish rock band. Among the seriously wounded was Matthew Gross, a 27-year-old Jewish bandmate of Burmeister's from Montclair, N.J. Also wounded were a 52-year-old Argentine man, a 30-year-old Swiss man, a 35-year-old New York City man and a married couple from Verdun, France. Kamal's family members in his hometown of Gaza City said he had no connection to any Islamic militant groups. In fact, he had once been a victim of such groups. In 1992, Kamal was abducted by a band of Islamic vigilantes who broke his legs and an arm after several days of beatings. According to graffiti the vigilantes later painted on walls, Kamal was beaten because he smoked hashish and drank alcohol, in violation of Islamic law. Relatives said Kamal, an English teacher, was distraught over big financial losses he had suffered since his arrival in the United States on Christmas Eve. "My husband is not a terrorist; he was just hopeless," Fathiya Abu Kamal, 55, was quoted as saying. But the amount of money he was said to have lost to unscrupulous business partners—variously put at $300,000 to $500,000—also prompted questions. Kamal, who had become fluent in English after working for several years for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, was a successful English teacher at a Gaza high school and university, as well as a well-paid tutor and translator. Family members said he had amassed his nest egg after 50 years of hard work and sound investments in Egypt and Switzerland. Still, a nest egg of as much as a half-million dollars seemed remarkable to some in a place like Gaza, especially given what was described as Kamal's lavish spending habits, to say nothing of the demands he faced in supporting six children. Kamal fled his native town of Jaffa, near Tel Aviv, during the 1948 War of Independence. Like tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees, he settled his family in Gaza. Kamal then decided to seek a new and better life in the United States. His plan, family members said, was to increase his fortune and then bring his wife and children to this country. But within weeks after arriving in New York, he traveled to Florida, established residency there by living at a motel and bought the Beretta, according to officials. He later returned to New York by bus, presumably to avoid detection of the pistol by airport security—giving credence to the theory that Sunday's shooting spree was premeditated. New York City police officials provided further evidence to that effect when they announced this week that Kamal visited the 86th-floor observation deck on Saturday, one day before the shooting. One more unanswered question prompted by the case concerned whether his first visit to the site of the crime was to check security at the New York landmark, or if he had brought the gun along, but backed off from carrying out the crime. His family members said he had called them over the weekend to tell them he was facing financial troubles. When they heard news of the shooting, they said they could not believe who had carried it out until they called a friend in the United States who confirmed that it indeed had been Kamal. His family soon set up a traditional mourning tent outside their single-story home in the relatively fashionable Al-Hawa neighborhood in Gaza City. In the tent, where the family receives for three days friends who come to pay condolences, people sipped Turkish coffee and asked each other why Kamal committed the crime. As elsewhere in the world, there was much speculation, but no firm answers.

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