By Joe Spier
JERUSALEM –It is April 9, 2013 after a long night in the air, my plane has landed at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport. I have arrived in Israel a couple of days in advance of 27 Calgarians who will begin “Israel @ 65”, the Calgary Jewish Federation tour that my wife and I are chairing.
I have already cleared customs, located my bag on the metal carousel, walked through the busy arrivals area and found Nir Ben-Shoham who is to drive me in his taxi up to Jerusalem where he will deposit me at the David Citadel Hotel.
Nir, a Jerusalemite, is an old friend. For years, Nir, a taxi driver, has worked closely with the Jerusalem office of UIA Federations Canada serving countless Canadians visiting Israel and at various times has driven me to and from Ben Gurion Airport and Jerusalem. The 45-minute drive always gives us ample time to talk. I try to practice my less than adequate Hebrew and Nir his English. Nir’s English is far superior to my Hebrew.
It is evening now, the sun has set and as I set up my laptop compelled to begin writing this article, I gaze from my hotel suite balcony upon the Old City and the beams bathing her outer walls with golden radiance. I realize that I am standing where Jews stood over 3,500 years ago, the ancestral home of the Jewish people. Where Jews inhabit the same land, speak the same language and worship the same God they did 35 millennia ago. No other people can make that claim to the land in which they dwell.
This is the story I feel compelled to tell.
As I enter Nir Ben-Shoham’s taxi, as always, I look for the photograph. It is a snapshot of a young woman, Limor Ben-Shoham, sister to Nir. She is 27 in the picture taken in 2002. There are no newer photos.
Café Moment was a neighborhood fixture in Jerusalem’s upscale Rehavia district. Located at the corners of Aza and Ben-Maimon Streets, the café sat across the street from the Prime Minister’s residence. The cafe, non-kosher, was a popular, crowded hangout for young secular, liberal Israelis – students, artists, journalists, professionals looking to escape the dour religiosity of the Holy City.
Limor Ben-Shoham, the daughter of secular Sephardic Jews, was young, pretty and single, described by her friends, of which she had many, “as a creative and optimistic person who always appreciated things and didn’t take them for granted.” “She had a heart big enough to include everyone,” said one of her siblings. Limor worked as a copy company accounts supervisor.
Every Saturday night, Limor would go with friends to the Café Moment. On February 23, 2002, Limor celebrated her 27th birthday with her friends at the café. Two weeks later, the evening of Saturday, March 9, she was at the café as usual.
Limor’s father had just learned from the TV that a terrorist had struck Netanya. Concerned, he telephoned his daughter on her cell phone cautioning her to be careful. Limor responded that she was okay with the café being in the area of the Prime Minister’s heavily guarded residence and with a security guard at the entrance to the cafe, she felt safe.
Shortly before 10:30 pm, the café is teeming with people, so crowded that some are lined up outside waiting to get in. Limor is sitting at the bar with her friend Meirav. Her back is to the entrance. They are waiting for other friends to arrive. Meirav excuses herself to go to the washroom. And then a suicide bomber, a member of Hamas dispatched from the West Bank with a massive bomb secreted under his clothing, makes his way to the entrance. As the security guard attempts to push him out the front door, the terrorist detonates a powerful explosive packed with nails and small pieces of metal that completely guts the restaurant leaving it a blackened shell. Eleven people are killed, their bodies blown to bits, and 54 injured. Meirav emerges unhurt. Limor does not; her body is shredded by the blast.
Limor Ben-Shoham is buried in Jerusalem’s Givat Shaul cemetery. She is survived by her parents, Tzipora and Shlomo and four siblings, Yaron, Nir, Benzi and Orit. Above the Gilo neighborhood of Jerusalem where Limor lived stands a large engraved stone monument honoring her memory and The Limor Ben-Shoham Observation Point built with the assistance of Canadian Jewry. To date, 2,493 Israeli men, women and children, whose only crime was living in the Jewish State, have been murdered by Palestinian terrorists.
Back to the present, it is now April 15, Yom Hazikaron (Israel’s Memorial Day) in remembrance of Israel’s fallen soldiers and victims of terrorism. Throughout the day, only somber music and narratives of those who sacrificed their lives in defense of the State of Israel and of those murdered by acts of terror are played on radio and television. All public places are closed. It is 11:00 am and our group from Calgary is near downtown Jerusalem. The siren sounds and it will wail for 2 minutes. Traffic stops and all occupants exit vehicles. Like everyone else, we stand in solemn and respectful silence deep in thought of the ultimate price paid by so many.
My thoughts are with Limor Ben-Shoham. My thoughts are also with Gilad Misheiker, son of our cousin’s law partner, who died in a helicopter crash en route to army service in southern Lebanon. They are with Yoni Netanyahu, brother of Israel’s Prime Minister, who fell in battle rescuing the Entebbe hostages. And with two I have previously written of, IAF Colonel Ilan Ramon who perished in the space shuttle Columbia as it disintegrated upon re-entering the earth’s atmosphere and his son IAF Captain Assaf Ramon who died when the fighter jet he was piloting crashed into the ground. Within Israel, there are few who do not have a relative or close friend to remember on Yom Hazikaron.
Tonight, to mark the end of Yom Hazikaron, the official government ceremony will be held at the military cemetery on Mount Herzl. The families of all victims of terror are invited. The Ben-Shoham family will not be there. They, together with a number of other families of victims of terror, boycott the ceremony in protest for the freeing of Palestinian prisoners with blood on their hands in exchange for the release of kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit. Limor’s brother Benzi warns that the released terrorists will continue their murdering ways. “I do not want to see any more new bereaved families. There are too many already,” he says. Other families of victims are more accepting of their government’s difficult dilemma left to choose between two perhaps similarly bad alternatives.
Ibrahim Hamed, the Hamas military commander and architect of the Café Moment bombing and other terror attacks, apprehended in 2006, remains in jail in Israel. He is serving 45 consecutive life sentences. The Israeli government refused to put him on the list of those to be traded for Gilad Shalit.
And that now brings us to the Israeli-Palestinian issue, to many an insoluble conflict, a Gordian knot which may never be unraveled. Something everyone talks about seemingly forever. Views are endless.
Is the West Bank a “disputed” territory or an “occupied” territory; are the settlements legal or not; these are issues for lawyers and scholars. The morality of the Israeli presence in the West Bank; can Israel exercise control over Palestinians and be both a Jewish state and a democratic state; these are issues for philosophers. Borders, Palestinian refugees, dismantling settlements, the status of Jerusalem, these are issues for politicians. The opinions fill volumes and divide Israelis themselves.
The families of the victims of terror have less of a world view. They just don’t want more to be killed. More than others, they fear that an independent Palestinian state will devolve into a terrorist state. They fear an independent Palestine in the West Bank will become a launching site for rocket attacks the length and breadth of Israel as happened in the south when Israel left Gaza. Instead of a reign of peace, Israel received a rain of rockets. They fear an independent Palestine in the West Bank will spawn new suicide bombers to cross into Israel and murder innocents. They fear more families of victims of terror will join the Ben-Shohams and all the “Families of Bereavement.”
On March 21, 2013, U.S. President Barack Obama spoke in Jerusalem directly to the Israeli people. He said, “Just as Israelis built a state in their homeland, Palestinians have a right to be a free people in their own land.” And he urged Israelis, “Put yourself in their shoes – look at the world through their eyes.”
Was the U.S. President right in asking Israelis to look at the world through the eyes of the Palestinians? Maybe so, but peace will never come until the Palestinians look at the world through the eyes of Nir Ben-Shoham.
*
Spier is a retired lawyer with a keen interest in Jewish history. You may contact him via joe.spier@sdjewishworld.com.