Laura Blumfeld's 'The Apology: Letters From A Terrorist'

History repeats itself. You can try not to believe me, but it’s undeniably true. Wars and conflicts between groups repeat time and time again. There can be large comparisons seen between conflicts in the Middle East between, the Civil Rights Movement that took place in the United States during the 1960s’ and disputes in the United States over the argument of slavery. These conflicts were resolved or can still be resolved by ones’ willingness to accept different opinions and diverse ways of behaving. In Laura Blumfeld’s “The Apology: Letters from a Terrorist”, instead of hating a Muslim terrorist for shooting her father, she used her background in Middle East Correspondence to send letters and communicate with her father’s shooter, Omar Khatib. After revealing that she is the daughter of the man he shot, she discovers the remorse in the gunmen but also begins to understand Omar’s reasoning behind the shooting. Blumfeld put herself in Omar’s position to get his point of view on why he did what he did. “Thirteen years have passed. Yes, it’s so late to come and ask you about your injuries, but I would like you to know that

was a very influential person in the Civil Rights Movement and in American History. While in jail, he saw a newspaper containing an article from clergymen in the surrounding area asking him to stop his peaceful protest. He responded with a letter titled “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” In that letter, he put his position into the clergymen’s perspective so they could why he was protesting. He compared himself to St. Paul and stated, “just as the Apostle Paul left his little village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to practically every hamlet and city of the Greco-Roman world, I too am compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my particular hometown.” King used these powerful words to allow the clergymen, and others who opposed the Civil Rights Movement, to understand why he protested for what was