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September 10, 2003

AS THEY DID ON 9/11, PALESTINIANS DANCE FOR JOY

by Judy Lash Balint

Instead of placing the ring on the finger of his beloved, 20 year old Hanan Sand reverently laid the gold band on the shrouded body of his fiance Nava Appelbaum as she was buried this morning.

        The guests who should have been getting ready to take part in the Appelbaum-Sand simcha tonight, rushed instead to attend the funerals of Nava and her father Dr. David Appelbaum this morning--less than twelve hours after they were murdered as they were getting out of their car for a father/daughter coffee date the night before the wedding.

        The depth of the tragedy is being felt today in ripples of pain that reverberate through the circles of people touched by the extraordinary doctor.

        And the Appelbaums were the first victims identified---five other families have been ripped apart.

        I had an early morning appointment today at the Terem Clinic just up the road--the handwritten English and Hebrew sign on the door simply said the clinic would be closed from 9a.m-1.pm so that staff could attend the funerals of clinic founder and director Dr. Appelbaum and his daughter.

        Nurses, doctors and medical receptionists walked about in stunned silence as they tried to contact patients and close down the clinic and organize carpools to the cemetery.

        I made my way down to Emek Refayim, just 10 minutes walk away, to make some kind of statement by meeting a friend for coffee. On the way down, the sounds of children singing waft out of a classroom at the middle school on the corner. Everyone in the neighborhood heard the horrific explosion, and everyone uses Emek Refayim on a daily basis.

        The street has become filled with coffee bars and restaurants as an alternative to the downtown scene, which lost its cachet after a string of bomb attacks on Jaffa Road and the Ben Yehuda Mall. Cafe Aroma, the place with the best coffee on the street--closed. Aroma is notable for employing Arab cashiers and barristas who work alongside the Israelis and Russian immigrants.The Coffee Mill, owned by American immigrants--closed with a handwritten sign expressing sorrow over the loss of friends and colleagues. Caffit--scene of an attempted terror attack last year thwarted by an alert waiter, is open.

        I choose to sit on the patio of the bakery next door to be more visible. Let the press see people patronizing the cafes. Across the road and down a couple of blocks, small groups gather in front of the remains of Cafe Hillel. Police, border patrol and IDF soldiers mill about as workers finish erecting grey scaffolding to shield the investigators inside.

        Friends stop to hug each other and some just stand mesmerized by the scene. A friend tells me she spent the night comforting a girlfriend who lives in a second floor apartment directly across from Cafe Hillel. The young woman had observed an unwanted birds-eye view of the devastation and carnage--images she'll never erase.
Several women came to quietly light memorial candles and offer prayers, while a group of older men debated political solutions.

        An American couple approached a police officer to ask about the fate of their
car that had been parked across the street from the cafe last night. "Over
in the pound in Talpiyot--if it's still alive," they were told. Two young women stood talking into their cellphones telling their friends how Avi had been found at Hadassah Hospital with glass shards in his hand: "He's pretty shaken up..."

        Owners and workers in the small shops further up the street stood in their doorways worrying about how the attack would affect business. Security guards in front of the restaurants that were open tried to look casual, and a smattering of "davka" customers were doing their best to act normal.

The images of young Arabs in Gaza gleefully celebrating the killings have been playing on TV since last night. Here on Emek Refayim there are no calls for revenge, no expressions of anger (Increasingly many here are questioning whether our reaction is "normal.") Instead, there's just deep sadness and unfathomable pain over the loss of people like Dr. Appelbaum, who had just returned home from New York where he led a symposium on the second anniversary of 9/11 to teach terror-trauma procedures to medical professionals. ------------

Judy Lash Balint is a Jerusalem based writer and author of Jerusalem Diaries:
In Tense Times (Gefen). www.jerusalemdiaries.com

Posted at 10:48 AM by

Comments

Hamas continues to be backwards in their approach to "resolution." And now they'll act as if the Israeli retaliation is so uncalled for... Their stupidity boggles.

Posted by: Frank on September 10, 2003 02:56 PM

Thank you for sharing that very sad story. Really no different that the buzz bombs of WWII. It just shows the connection that the Terrorists have with the inhumanity, brutality and suicidal mentality of Hilter and his evil cronies.

"Instead of placing the ring on the finger of his beloved, 20 year old Hanan Sand reverently laid the gold band on the shrouded body of his fiance Nava Appelbaum as she was buried this morning."

DIA (GEE-A) as they say in the Gaelic
's mor a mulad 's mor ochone! GREAT MUST BE HIS SORROW GREAT!, OCHONE!!

May God have mercy on the souls of Nava and her father Dr. David Appelbaum. As I write the tears come to my eyes to think of it and images and memories of 9/11 and September 1940 and 1944 touch my heart. "Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn."

To think anyone could celebrate such a heinous act is just horrible but to me it just proves that though we as humans have a tendency toward altruism we are killers, the most dangerous game and we have a natural lust for blood and revenge.

The Palestinian Nationalists lust for the destruction of Jewish race and Israel but what they don't realize is that if they achieve that goal or come close to it the horror of the attempted holocaust might just backfire. I am not a Jew nor an Israeli but if that were my kindred blasted to smithereens I would not rest until every vestige of the so-called Palestinian Autority with all its schools of hate and terrorism were utterly destroyed and the survivors harried out to the land to the four corners of the earth so that not even the memory of their mother tongue or so-called homeland remained. Is that the kind of response the extremists want to provoke? Let them sow if they like but then they will have to reap the whirlwind of the terrible swift sword of justice. If they want to prove they are unworthy of peaceful coexistence they are doing a good job at it.

In 1915 the Turks tortured and killed Highland POW's in plain violation of international law and they laughed and cheered while doing it. They left the dismembered bodies to rot in the sun.

Auld Pop and his men did not cry but turned to each other and said

"They deserve what's coming to them and frankly I hope they get it and we are the men to do it." As it so turned out they met the Turks again in the Struma Valley and in Palestine. The Turks learned the meaning of the word MIR CATH -Highland battle frenzy. I shan't bore you with the gory details but suffice it to say that by 1918 if the Turks even knew the Highland Regiments were facing them they deserted their trenches and ran for their lives.
In 1919 not one Highland Soldier was killed or molested in anyway when the Regiment was stationed in Constantinople (Istambul). The Turks had learned a bitter lesson. Their ferocity and terror just provoked an unforgiving terrible retribution among men who were prepared to lay down their lives to kill in the most terrible fashion in hand to hand combat as many Turks as they could with no fear of death themselves and to inflict on the Turks an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth withouth any fear of the consequences. When men of honor have lost their brothers, their best friends, their brother-in-laws, their neighbors, their kith, their kin, their comrades, they fear not Sergeant Death. For such warriors revenge on evil killers becomes an unslackable thirst that cannot be quenched but with warm blood, smashed bones and limbs and the gory bed of their dead enemies who will rise no more. "We will drain our dearest veins but our sons and daughters shall be free."

In one of the great ironies of history the challenge of Hitler's Final Solution created the finest race of warriors this world has seen since the Spartans. I for one would fear to provoke them or corner the Masada Brigades the Never Again Brigades into a life or death struggle because I know it would result in my complete ruin and utter destruction. But the cult of death embraced by the terroists is great. Nothing will ever satisfy them except death and the complete destruction of Israel. I have said that for thirty years. By the way nothing will ever satisfy Bin Laden and his wicked gang either except the complete destruction of America. There is only one thing to do with such hateful dragons and rats. Smoke 'em out, hunt 'em down and kill ever last one of 'em. If we don't have the guts to be tough enough to do the job then maybe the bad guys deserve to win. Like it or not it will come to that KILL OR BE KILLED. That is a story as old as Cain and old as Mammoth hunters and as old as the Devil. You can't reason with thugs and murderers as Churchill said you have to answer them in the only language they understand: violence and then pray for God's mercy and then pray killing doesn't become a habit. Because killing does come naturally to man, ladies, whether anyone wants to admit it or not.

Scratch Homo Sapiens and you have a bone-crushing, blood drinking, lust driven, flesh eating savage. Neither tigers nor men can ever totally lose their their nature even if they lose their teeth and their skins. The killer instinct, the blood lust remains....

Posted by: Ricardo Munro on September 11, 2003 02:45 AM

War means fighting and fighting means killing. Let's wage non stop total war on them until total and final victory.

Posted by: Joel on September 11, 2003 02:12 PM

War on whom, Joel? Hamas, Iraq?

I say wage total war on Bush, that SOB traitor.

Posted by: neil on September 28, 2003 02:54 AM