The following article can be found in the Philadephia Daily News and was written by Ronnie Polaneczky

Ronnie Polaneczky: Terrorist's son shakes father's sins

By Ronnie Polaneczky
Philadelphia Daily News
Daily News Columnist

ZAK EBRAHIM and Sharon Mattson were dating for two weeks when he realized that he cared about her too much to maintain the lie he'd told her when they met: That his dad had died of a heart attack when he was a child.

Sharon's dad suffered a fatal heart attack when she was young. She told Zak how glad she was that he understood the depth of her loss.

Zak had to tell her that their "cosmic bond," as Sharon had called it, didn't exist.

"He said, 'We have to talk. It's pretty serious,' " recalls Sharon. "I thought, 'Oh, my God, he's married! I'm going to kill him!' "

No, he told her. He wasn't married. But his father, an Egyptian-born American citizen named El-Sayed Nosair, wasn't dead. He was serving a life sentence at a super-max prison in Colorado, for terror-related convictions. They included the 1990 murder of Rabbi Meir Kahane, the controversial founder of the Jewish Defense League, and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

"I was in shock," says Sharon, who spent hours doing Internet research on Nosair - and becoming more and more heartbroken for Zak, who was just 7 when Kahane was killed. "This was a secret he'd been living with since he was a little boy. He'd barely told anyone about it."

In the three years since Zak, 27, unburdened his heart to Sharon, 36, the two have gotten engaged and have put down roots together in Doylestown, where Zak is working on a memoir and Sharon paints pet portraits.

Tonight, Zak, born Abdulaziz El-Sayed Nosair, will go public about his past in a big way at the Student Peace Alliance 2010 Conference in Austin, Tex.

There, he will speak about the importance of breaking generational and cultural patterns of violence - the way he has, by committing to live a peaceful, tolerant life, in opposition to everything his father stood for.

"I felt shame for what my dad did. We got death threats. We moved 22 times. It was a terrible way to grow up," says Zak, as he, Sharon and I dine together at 86 West, a trendy restaurant on Main Street in Doylestown. It's a surreal setting in which to listen to Zak describe the jarring impact his father's actions had upon him.

In 1990, the family - Zak, his mother and two siblings, whom he'd prefer not to name - was living in a tight Muslim community in Cliffside Park, N.J. Zak's mother (an American-born convert to Islam) was a homemaker. Nosair, an Egyptian engineer who became a U.S. citizen in 1989, repaired air conditioners in New York City's courts.

Nosair spent most evenings at mosques in Jersey City and Brooklyn, where, unbeknown to Zak's mother, he was becoming a radical follower of Egyptian Muslim madman Omar Abdel-Rahman - "the Blind Sheik"- mastermind of the 1993 WTC bombing.

Zak's mother learned how far her husband had turned from Islam's tenets of peace when she turned on the TV on Nov. 5, 1990 - the night of Kahane's murder - and saw Nosair, covered in blood, being transported by ambulance to Bellevue Hospital.

The family quickly learned that Nosair, who'd shot Kahane, was himself shot during his attempt to flee. Two others were wounded.

In the aftermath, Zak's family received death threats and was ostracized from relatives and the Muslim community. Zak and his siblings were kicked out of their school and spent the next decade moving - 22 times - with their mother, who found sporadic work as a teacher in fledgling Muslim schools.

Their life of unrelenting poverty was exacerbated by abuse from the man Zak's mother married after divorcing Nosair.

"What my stepfather did to us was as bad as what my father did to us," says Zak, who has his stepfather's last name. "Maybe worse."

The family lived for a time in Philly, where Zak attended Kensington High School. It's where he met the first real friend to whom he decided to disclose the secret of his past.

"We were sitting in Rittenhouse Square, and I told him," recalls Zak. "He laughed so hard, he fell off the bench. He thought I was joking. I kept saying, 'No, it's true.' "

His friend eventually told Zak what he'd hoped to hear: That Nosair's actions were wrong and that Zak should not be blamed for them.

"He's my best friend, to this day," says Zak.

Over the years, others have not been as compassionate. One "friend," a co-worker who'd been drinking, even menaced Zak with a knife when he learned who Zak's father was.

"He said, 'I'd be doing a lot of Americans a favor if I killed you,' " says Zak, shuddering.

So Zak didn't know how Sharon would react to the truth of his past. They'd met at a free poker tournament at a Doylestown restaurant, where they flirted all night. Zak had been in town from Pittsburgh for a few weeks, working on a construction job. Soon he was spending all his free time with Sharon, who was raised in the Doylestown area.

After five dates, he knew he couldn't lie any more.

Life hasn't been the same since Sharon reacted with acceptance and empathy to his confession. They fell in love, got engaged, moved in together and have been slowly figuring out how they might transform Nosair's legacy of violence into Zak's mission of peace.

A breakthrough came last summer, when Sharon learned that a movie about William Kunstler - the late political activist and lawyer who'd defended Nosair in the Kahane murder trial - had been made by his filmmaker daughters, Sarah and Emily Kunstler. Called William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe, it was to be screened in Philadelphia at the Ritz. Sharon asked the Kunstlers if Zak could attend.

That night, Zak wound up doing an impromptu, question-and-answer session after the screening, where he identified himself as Nosair's son. He felt liberated.

"It was a relief not to hide anymore. I am not responsible for what my father did," says Zak, whose father's legal defense was partially financed by none other than Osama bin Laden. "But I felt I could tell my story for good. The cycle of violence has to be stopped by those most intimately affected by it."

The Kunstlers are so intrigued with Zak, they're planning a film about his desire to make something good out of his past.

"Like us, he suffered a lot for the actions of his father," says Emily Kunstler, whose family received death threats when William Kunstler defended Nosair.

"My father talked all the time about Michaelangelo's statue of David, how it's the only depiction of David right before he threw the stone at Goliath - his moment of decision. My father was obsessed with the 'moment of decision,' where someone decides to stand up for what he believes, even if it's at personal risk. Zak is at that moment right now."

Zak would like to be a spokesman for peace. By knitting his past into his present, he hopes to create a future where young people, especially, will know that they can change the world by living in tolerance. He'll say that this weekend, at the conference of the Student Peace Alliance.

Julie Simon-Mishel, conference managing director, is glad to have him.

"Young people often believe that their past is their destiny," says Simon-Mishel. "They think if they come from a violent past, they have to repeat it. With Zak, the message is, 'If I can get past my family history, anyone can.' "

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