Merkaz HaRav Families Urge PM: Don't Give in to Terror

The families of the victims of the Merkaz HaRav massacre have petition Prime Minister Netanyahu not to "give in to terror," as the Chinese government exerts pressure on Israel not to back an American-initiated lawsuit against the Bank of China for allegedly funding deadly terrorist activity.

The lawsuit was filed in 2007 by Jewish American citizens Yekutiel and Sheryl Wultz, after their 16-year-old son, Daniel, was murdered the previous year in an Islamic Jihad terrorist attack in Tel Aviv. According to the Wall Street Journal, it was the Israeli government who urged the Wultz's to file the suit and take advantage of tough new US anti-terror laws. The Israeli government promised to provide intelligence regarding the involvement of Chinese banks in funneling money to terrorist groups, including Islamic Jihad.

However, the current Israeli government has since appeared to be backtracking, amid widely-reported claims that the Chinese government pressured Netanyahu to prevent a key intelligence official from testifying, in exchange for a high-profile visit to China this past May, which promoted highly lucrative trade ties between Israel and China.

In a letter, signed by the families and rabbis of the eight youths, both high school and post-high school yeshiva students, murdered by an Arab gunman while studyiing Torah in the Merkaz HaRav Yeshiva library in 2008, tthe Prime Minister was reminded of his address to the families of the victims, one year after the attack.

"As you know, some of those families suing the Bank of China are the families of those killed in the terrible attack... on the Merkaz Harav Yeshiva in Jerusalem. On that accursed day eight young, innocent students were murdered," they wrote.

"At the [first] memorial of the attack you came to Merkaz HaRav and addressed the gathering crowd [saying]: 'A year ago a major disaster befell the people of Israel. Eight of our sons fell as martyrs while studying Torah. They fell at the hands of murderers who, if they had the chance, would have murdered us all. They tried to cut down our spiritual strength and that is why they came here. In the course of the last year, we have seen that they failed. We received additional proof of this several months ago, in an operation against terror in Gaza. The entire nation of Israel enlisted, including yeshiva students, who also paid a price. To the families, I say: accept this day as a consolation, and I believe that with our joint strength, we will overcome all of our enemies, in the future as well, and achieve peace for our land and our city.'

"Today, 4.5 years after that speech, we ask the honorable prime minister not to surrender to the Chinese demands,” the families wrote. “We are confident that in the overall national view of things, you see yourself as heading the nation and the families in the fight against terror, even in the face of heavy pressure from a foreign country, and [contradictory] interests – important as they may be.

"In friendship and respect, we ask that you stand firm in the war of the Nation of Israel against terror and to make clear to the Chinese that the state of Israel will not be dictated to in this matter.”

"We call on Your Honor to come out with a clear statement that the State of Israel will give the required assistance to the families, as was promised by your office, so that they can receive justice vis-a-vis the terror organizations and their accomplices.”

The letter is signed by Rabbi Yaakov Shapira, Dean of Merkaz Harav Yeshiva; Rabbi Yerachmiel Weiss, Dean of the Hgh School (Yerushalayim Yeshiva for Youths); Rabbi Elyashav and Moriya Avichail, parents of Segev Pniel Hy”d; Rabbi Tuvia and Tzofiya Lifshitz, parents of Yochai Hy”d; Rabbi Tzemach and Elisheva Hirshfeld, parents of Yonadav Haim Hy”d, and Naftali Moses, father of Avraham David Hy”d; Dror and Avital Eldar, parents of Yonatan Yitzhak Hy”d.

Mourning Under Glass – a Review By Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein

You will not enjoy reading Mourning Under Glass, which is exactly why you should read it. It is not meant to be enjoyed, but to drag you in to where you really do not want to go. You will feel pain, be moved to tears, and have to think the “what if it would have happened to me” questions that we all suppress, lest we descend into madness. You should read it because you will learn things about people dealing with sudden tragedy and its aftermath that you will not learn elsewhere. If you read on, you will have little choice. Guilt will compel you to read the book, so long as a Jewish heart beats within you.

Mourning Under Glass: Reflections On A Son’s Murder chronicles the snuffing out of the life of a precious neshamah in an Arab terror attack, and a full year of his father’s coping with the aftermath. Avraham David Moses was one of the eight kedoshim to perish in the Mercaz HaRav terror attack massacre in Adar2008. Naftoli Moses, Avraham David’s father, takes us on a rare journey into the unthinkable, the baring of a soul still raw and wounded.

People often have a morbid fascination with tragedy that they are not party to, and can stand back and gawk from a safe distance. Naftoli Moses does not allow you to do that. If you, a stranger, want to know more, you will have to feel the pain with him.

The book is not long. If words cannot really do justice to the horror, why prolong the agony? Between its covers, however, it surgically focuses on many important topics, many of them around the theme of the insensitivity of those who used the tragedy to their own advantage, ignoring feelings of mourners, the facts, and sometimes decency itself. A social commentator on Channel One would search for “meaning” in the massacre – and discover it in the link between Mercaz HaRav, Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kook, zt”l, and the accursed settlers his ideology inspired. A political correspondent invented a rumor of a planned revenge attack upon Arabs, to diminish the sympathy that Israelis were feeling for the Mercaz HaRav community. When Avraham David’s mother quietly refused to condemn the Israeli government for gathering pictures of the massacre to show the world what Arab terror is about, Haaretz turned an interview about the emotions of loss into a headline declaring her willingness to turn her son’s murder into “political use.”
The media’s exploitation of the murders was manifest, deliberate, and perhaps not unexpected. The reader will be more surprised by the depth of pain that Naftoli Moses and others felt when others, sometimes unwittingly, appropriated the victims for their own purposes. He explores the issue of memory, how different individuals and groups will accentuate different parts of a whole so that the products do not even resemble each other. He raises the tough issue of the clash between private memory and public memory, without offering an easy solution. We fidget when he chronicles how the public relations and fundraising agendas of organizations sometimes marginalized the victims’ families. He shows how easily outside interests, and sometimes even groups that were close, seized moments of meaning from the families and turned consolation into prolongation of agony.

One chapter can be important as a stand-alone. “A Concise Field Guide to Condolence Callers” will make many wince, when they see their own mistakes mirrored and amplified through the incisive comments of a mourner who pulls no punches. (As the chapter title suggests, the book is not without humor, albeit bitter, cynical, and dark.) Reading it carefully will jump-start a process of improving the skills necessary to properly fulfill the mitzvah of nichum aveilim – comforting the mourner.

There was room for one hero, and he was not difficult to identify. Rav Yerachmiel Weiss, the rosh yeshiva of Mercaz’s high school, stands out for his sensitivity and his ability to communicate emunah to a watching nation, gently triumphing over the skepticism of a veteran secularist interviewer.
The mood is somber throughout. This does not mean that its message is a negative one. In one of the closing pages, the author offers an epitaph to the year of mourning that makes us conscious of the great gifts of our Torah, in good times and in times of great tragedy:

"And I, as the Psalmist wrote, “I groaned, each night my bed swam in tears. I melted it (Tehillim 6:7).” How much water rained from my red eyes, thinking about my son, feeling the terrible pain of loss. Remembering how much blood, in place of water, soaked the earth that evil night.

But this night [at a gathering close to the yahrzeit], I want to also recall the mercy that G-d, and my friends and neighbors, have rained down upon us all. …I need the Holy One to help heal the hole torn in my heart….Let heaven and earth once again meet; let the earth once more be kissed by G-d’s presence. Let once more the bounty of His promise spring forth from our too-dry land. Let the cracked surface of my soul feel the warm, healing rain of G-d’s love."

It is a particularly poignant and triumphant tziduk ha-din/ proclamation of Hashem’s righteousness, even when we cannot understand it. It bears testimony to the emunah and faith of the Jewish neshamah. Earlier in the book, Moses allows that “There is something special about our tribe. We are a family bound together by ties that span time and place. We are a family….Perhaps it should comes as no surprise that the majority of letters I received were from Orthodox Jewish youth, studying in Orthodox Jewish schools….Daily study, daily prayer, keeping kosher, keeping the Sabbath – how could these not affect one’s connection to Am Yisrael?”

May the author’s next works share with us the sprouting of peace and happiness within his soul.

This review was first published in the Winter 2012 issue of Jewish Action

---

Baruch C. Cohen, Esq.

November 25, 2012 at 10:41 pm

Rabbi Adlerstien:

I read the book when it came out. Your review is precise and accurate.

You obviously got the intended message of the book, and caught the subtle nuances of pain that bereaved parents have (that we wonder whether non-bereaved parents get). You have shown great empathy and sympathy for those of us bereaved parents.

Baruch C. Cohen, Esq.

[YA - There could be no better endorsement of the book than your approval, Baruch! Yehi ratzon that no parents should have to experience the loss of children.]

Bank of China Behind Murder of Yeshiva Students A $1 billion lawsuit filed in New York state court against the Bank of China alleges that it intentionally and recklessly provided services to terrorist groups.

A $1 billion lawsuit filed on Tuesday in New York state court against the Bank of China alleges that it “intentionally and recklessly” provided services to terrorist groups via its New York branch. The suit was filed by the families of eight Israeli high school students who were murdred on March 2008 in a shooting in Jerusalem, Dow Jones Newswires reported.

The civil lawsui alleges that the Bank of China made dozens of wire transfers for the Hamas terrorist gorp, to the tune of several million dollars, starting in 2003.

The money transfers were coordinated by the Hamas from Iran and Syria, according to the lawsuit, and was processed through the U.S. branches of the Bank of China, then sent to a Bank of China account in China owned by the Hamas and the Islamic Jihad. From there the money was transferred to the Gaza strip and the PA territories, to fund terrorist attacks.

According to the lawsuit, Israeli officials met with officials of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security and China’s central bank in 2005, to urge them to prevent the Bank of China from making these wire transfers, but they were ignored.

A representative for Bank of China in New York could not be reached by Dow Jones Newswires.

Five families are named as plaintiffs in the Bank of China suit seeking $1 billion in compensatory and punitive damages. Eight students died on March 6, 2008, when Islamist terrorist entered the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva in Jerusalem and started shooting at the students.

Merkaz Harav Memorial

Memorial at Mercaz Harav Yeshiva on Third Yarzeit of Massacre

(Israelnationalnews.com) Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva in Jerusalem held a memorial ceremony Thursday evening marking the third yarzeit of the massacre of eight yeshiva boys.
The event was followed by an additional memorial gathering at the Yeshurun synagogue in Jerusalem. The following video features musical segments from the event.


At the memorial in the Yeshiva, the Yeshiva Head, Rabbi Yaakov Shapira, told the gathered audience: "They were not just murdered for the sanctification of G-d's Name - they lived foor the sanctification of G-d's Name. We remember them anew on this evening."
Rabbi Elyashiv Avichayil, whose son Segev Pniel was one of the eight martyrs, said: "Three years have passed since that cruel day, in which a terrorist hater of Israel entered, butchered and did not have mercy, murdered eight of our sons as they joyfully studied the Torah. These were three years of pain and tears."

"The entire nation was shocked, but in the world, there are still those who try to extinguish the light of Israel. We, the parents of the martyrs, call upon the sane and healthy world - stop limiting our light and our life in the Land of Israel." 

"Our eight holy sons, eight lights, our martyred sons who are so dear to us and the longing for them does not stop. With the grace of G-d not only have we not been broken, but we receive from those same children of ours strength and courage, and we go on sanctifying G-d's name, and from this terrible darkness a light will shine over Zion."  

On the first day of Adar Bet, three years ago, at 8:30 P.M., a terrorist entered the yeshiva bearing a semi-automatic rifle and opened fire in the library. Eight were killed at point-blank range and nine others were wounded. The terrorist was killed by an army officer who lived across the street and ran over to help and by an older student who shot from the roof.  He was an Arab citizen of Israel.

The eight yeshiva boys murdered were Yonatan Yitzchak Eldar, Ro'i Aharon Roth, Neria Cohen, Avraham David Moses, Segev Pniel Avichayil, Doron Mahareta, Yonadav Hirschfeld, and Yochai Lifschitz, may G-d avenge their blood.

Comments of Baruch C. Cohen, Esq., on the Mercaz HaRav Tragedy

We are in painful times. How can we think of Adar and how can we think of being BeSimcha, when tragedies surround us. When our friends in Los Angeles suffer tragic losses in one felt swoop.

 

Can mere words describe the magnitude of the tragedy across the world in Yerushalayim at Yeshiva Mercaz HaRav Kook? The outpouring of grief, the pure Yiddishe Tzaar, the tears and the anguish were so powerful and tragic that no person with a heart could remain unmoved. No person at that tragic levaya of eight innocent Bochurim could return to mundane, everyday life.  None of the attendees could return home to eat lunch, read the paper, or even engage in the pursuit of parnassa.  All felt the instinctive pull to bury their tear-stained faces in a Gemara, in a Tehillim, or anything that could invoke Divine mercy and beg Hashem, “Mi she’omar l’olamo dai, yomar litzaroseinu dai.”

 

For those not at the levaya, just the media pictures of eight figures wrapped in Tachrichim lined up next to each other were heartbreaking.  And as Ehrliche Yidden, we have an obligation to be Noseh B’ol, to share the burden of tragedy with those directly affected. Just think of the parents, the fathers and mothers of these bochurim, who raised these children from infancy, merited to watch them grow and blossom, and sent them to learn in yeshiva. The pain that is their lot and will continue to be their lot is something that we, as Jews, are obligated to feel.  Their pain should be our pain.  Their tragedy is our tragedy. It is the most elementary duty of being Noseh B’ol Im Chaveiro. It’s the calling card of a Yid.

 

In this week’s Yated Neman, Avrohom Birnbaum wrote a very powerful editorial entitled: "We are all Mercaz HaRav" wherein he registers his voice in disgust and dismay at the secular Jewish Israeli press’ coverage of this tragedy. Within a few hours of the heinous bloodbath, while Zaka volunteers were still scraping blood off the yeshiva’s floor, both the Jerusalem Post and Haaretz had editorial analysis on the tragedy. In the most detached fashion, their Jewish journalists began to analyze the “symbolism” and political ramifications of the tragedy. Firstly, for any Jew to write such an analysis within two hours of an attack shows tremendous callousness and lack of elementary feeling for the tragedy. In addition, are we so foolish that we do not realize that the Arab who attacked the “flagship institution of the religious Zionist movement” would just as soon murder us, our mothers, our fathers, our sons or our daughters in cold blood? The ability of these reporters to analyze Olmert’s political fallout when bodies were still being removed from the yeshiva attests to a most disturbing disconnect. Do we not realize that this is an existential war? This is a war for the survival of every last Jew in Eretz Yisroel and in the Diasporah, regardless of political views, religious observance or anything else. This disconnect from reality of the seemingly most astute people in the country, who through their role in the press shape public opinion, has come to the fore and the lessons to be learned are downright terrifying. Is it only the Torah community who understands this? Make no mistake: this is a war for survival and that our heads and our children’s heads are just as vulnerable as those of the eight murdered kedoshim.

 

In truth, although it is painful to admit, in the aftermath of the tragedy we have observed that even some fringe elements of our community seem to be analyzing what message the bloodthirsty terrorists were sending and, Lehavdil, what Divine message is inherent in the fact that bloodthirsty terrorists attacked the religious Zionist yeshiva of Merkaz Harav. Do we not understand that to the majority of Arabs, we are the same as Merkaz Harav? They will attack any target, any Jew and any yeshiva upon which they can get their bloodthirsty hands. How foolish it is for simple, superficial people to view a tragedy in such a detached way - as if it is us and them. Yes, we may have ideological differences with religious Zionist Hashkafa, but what does that have to do with the tragic loss of eight kedoshim? They were killed because they were Jewish and the terrorists would kill us or any Jew, just because we are Jewish. There have been Korbanos from all segments of Jewry - Chareidim, Religious Zionists, secularists and everyone in between. Rather than playing analyst, we should be Davening and doing Teshuvah when blood of Jewish yeshiva bochurim is being spilled.

 

I think it is worthwhile to quote the previous Klausenberger Rebbe zt”l from a Chumash-Rashi shiur said in 1984. The Klausenberger Rebbe offered practical advice on what believing Jews should do in such terrible situations, advice that seems as current today as when he gave it 25 years ago. “We must strengthen ourselves in emunah and understand that two things are completely above and beyond the normal order of nature. One is the terrible Jew hatred and wickedness that has gripped the Arabs. The second is the power of our Emunah and Yiras Shomayim, an Emunah and Yiras Shomayim that invests in us the ability to completely distance ourselves from having anything to do with these wicked people.” Let us not be swayed by the words of ‘experts,’ professors,’ and secular journalists who constantly spew venomous hatred of our holy Torah [while advocating suicidal “cooperation with the Arabs]” “Tayereh Yidden - Dear Jews, let us come together, let us not be afraid of the ever strengthening powers of wickedness that seek to prevail.  Let us grab onto the Holy Torah and simple emunah.  Only then will Hashem help us."

 

What powerful moving and relevant words to us then, and to us now.