Ben Bright-Fishbein is a risk-taker known for his stories of travel and danger, friends say.
Breaking News Alerts During Palestinian elections, BrightFishbein left the West Bank only when gunshots sprayed into the air, say friends who were not surprised by the weekend trek that landed Bright-Fishbein in the news. The 20-year-old Brown University junior ventured alone into the West Bank city of Nablus, where he was abducted Saturday by a Palestinian gunman while he sat in a cafe.
``This is absolutely Ben's style," said Jeremy Fugleberg , a friend and former classmate reached yesterday by telephone in South Dakota. ``I am sure he didn't want to be kidnapped, but this is absolutely Ben's style," said Fugleberg.
In a videotaped statement shown on Al-Jazeera television on Saturday, the New York City native said his captors would kill him if Israel did not release Palestinian prisoners.
Then, just as suddenly as they had taken him, dressed him in a skullcap, and said he was Israeli on the video, militants from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades turned him over to Palestinian security forces, who freed him to Israeli authorities near Nablus, a center for anti-Israeli militants.
Neither Bright-Fishbein nor his parents could be reached yesterday.
A friend who studied last semester with Bright-Fishbein at Hebrew University said the freed student was exhausted from being interrogated.
Reached by phone in Tel Aviv, Rachel Fredman , 20, said Bright-Fishbein called her yesterday. She said that his latest visit to Nablus was not the first to the West Bank for the political science major, who speaks some Arabic.
She said the abduction video, which showed Bright-Fishbein holding a Hebrew University student ID card, made him appear to be an Israeli. She said he does not normally wear a yarmulke.
``Ben is a secular guy, and that was propaganda," Fredman said.
Matan Shamir , another friend who had studied with BrightFishbein, said he traveled with Bright-Fishbein to the West Bank city of Ramallah three weeks ago.
``It is so easy to get there from Jerusalem," Shamir said in a telephone interview . ``You get on the Palestinian shuttle and go. It costs about 5 shekels, a little more than a dollar, not much to it at all."
Shamir, 20, said he returned from Jerusalem to the United States yesterday to learn that Bright-Fishbein had been abducted. ``I don't know what . . . he was thinking," he said.
Bright-Fishbein told Israeli investigators he had been kidnapped by a gunman named Ahmed, who chanced upon him at coffee shop .
``He [Ahmed] had a pistol, a grenade, and a machine gun," Bright-Fishbein told investigators, according to Reuters.
News that Palestinians had seized a hostage led to a search by Israeli troops and Palestinian security forces.
``In the end, I got the impression that they were in over their heads, and they were going crazy talking on the phone," BrightFishbein said, Reuters reported.
The 2003 graduate of Horace Mann High School in Riverdale, N.Y., attended American University in Cairo in fall 2005 and Hebrew University this spring. He writes for the Brown Daily Squeal, a political blog on campus, and interned this spring at the Jerusalem Post.
Another classmate, Richard Shusteris , 20, said curiosity led Bright-Fishbein to explore the West Bank.
Samuel Ashworth , a high school friend reached by phone in New York yesterday, said he and Bright-Fishbein are supposed to spend the summer in China.
``He likes to go where conflict is and get into peoples' faces," Ashworth said. `` He doesn't have appreciation of the dangers."
In an e-mail he sent Ashworth in April, Bright-Fishbein wrote about his plans to travel throughout the region. ``I hope I don't get kidnapped . . . wish me luck," Bright-Fishbein wrote. ``I might learn the first chapter of the Koran in case I am kidnapped."
AND....a video from veoh since that is the new theme of my blog...sharing videos with everyone. I liked this short film from a new series i found called best fest.