Tel Aviv traumatised but refuses to cower
A traumatised Tel Aviv sent a defiant message to terrorists this week, insisting that it’s business as usual across the city – even in the cafe where four people were murdered last Wednesday (June 8).
A traumatised Tel Aviv sent a defiant message to terrorists this week, insisting that it’s business as usual across the city – even in the cafe where four people were murdered last Wednesday (June 8).
The families of the victims have been remembering the lives cut short when two Hamas-affiliated gunmen opened fire in a popular night spot.
A wife, two children and a mother and father were mourning Ido Ben Ari, 41. Ilana Neve, 39, left behind a husband, four children and her parents. A devastated fiance is grappling with the loss of Mila Mishiev, 33, as are her parents. And Michael Feige, 58, is being mourned by a wife and three children.
Pnina Motzafi-Haller, a colleague and former neighbour of Feige, spoke to The AJN about how his death reduced her to tears. “He was really a peace-loving person,” she said, pointing out the tragic irony of his murder.
Feige, a dovish sociologist who wrote on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was “the kind of neighbour you run to for a piece of butter or a cup of sugar”, said Motzafi-Haller. She added: “You heard time and time again that he was a friend of everyone who knew him – he was really loved.”
As tributes were shared in the homes of those killed, at the hotels, beaches and in the synagogues of Tel Aviv, people gave short shrift to terror. Shavuot festivities took place in congregations as planned, while leisure and tourism activities continued unscathed.
At Sarona Market, where the attack took place, businesses insisted on getting up and running straight away, and say they have hardly seen any dint in takings. “Hundreds and hundreds of people have actually changed their schedules to come here,” Ido Minkovsky, a member of the centre’s management team, told The AJN. “It’s a very good answer to terror – not just an answer for here but also for around the world.”
One of the first people to head to the site of the attack, the Max Brenner cafe, when it reopened the next day, was Australia’s ambassador to Israel Dave Sharma, who took his deputy James McGarry and other staff there for lunch.
“We went to demonstrate solidarity with the people of Tel Aviv and the people of Israel after an attack that struck right at the heart of Israel,” McGarry told The AJN. “It was a challenge for me to be there knowing what had happened the night before, but it was also uplifting to see how many other people were there to show defiance.”
Sharma posted on Facebook, paying tribute to the “tough and resilient” nature of Israelis and adding: “We in Australia applaud and admire this resolve.”
The perpetrators, Muhammad and Khalid Muhamra from the West Bank town of Yatta, are both alive, and in the hands of Israeli police. Initial assessments suggest that they crept through a hole in the security barrier that stands between Israel and the most heavily Palestinian parts of the West Bank, and got a lift from another Palestinian – another illegal entrant to Israel who is also now in police hands – part of the way towards Tel Aviv, and then completed their journey using two taxis. They changed into dark suits before going to Max Brenner, so they would look like Tel Aviv professionals.
They blended in so well that a Tel Aviv policeman welcomed one of them to his home shortly after the attack to help him calm down and give him glass of water – believing that he was an innocent bystander. The attacker had thrown away his weapon and ran from the scene. “We thought he looked like all the other people running away from the scene of the attack,” the policeman’s wife, Ofri Hefetz-Grady, told local television.
The officer returned to the terror scene, where his colleagues had handcuffed the other suspect. He realised that his house guest’s suit matched the suspect’s, and ran back home to arrest his house guest.
“Those were the longest 20 seconds in my husband’s life,” Hefetz-Grady said. “He was sure he would come in and find us all dead. We saw the relief on his face when it was all over.”
Hamas’s leader in Gaza Ismail Haniyeh posted a picture of one of the attackers online and hailed him as a “hero”. The day before the attack, Hamas had declared Ramadan “the month of jihad”.
The office of the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas issued a statement saying that it “reaffirms its rejection of all operations that target civilians of any background, regardless of the justifications” – but without mentioning the Tel Aviv attack in particular. This contrasted the message issued by the Palestinian government after the Orlando shooting, which offered “heartfelt condolences to all the grieving families, relatives and friends of the victims”.
At Sarona Market this week, it was hard to imagine that this calm foodie enclave, surrounded by its open spaces and historic buildings, was the scene that witnesses described to this journalist.
“To see the blood mixed together with the food and the coffee is very difficult – the picture gets into your head and it doesn’t leave,” said Arele Klein.
A 45-year-old caterer and volunteer paramedic with the Zaka organisation, Klein had just finished a meeting nearby when he heard about the incident.
“I received the call and I was one street away so I ran to the restaurant, and got there so quickly that I heard the shots, several shots – there was still shooting.
“I ran to see where the shots [were coming from], and as I did so I found a woman of around 40 on the floor with no heartbeat. I tried to resuscitate her, and we gave her electric shock. She is now in hospital in a very serious condition. I continued 100 metres to the restaurant, where there was a man in a serious condition, with no heartbeat. There were several bullets still inside him, and we tried several lifesaving procedures … after he arrived in hospital he was declared dead.”
This man was later identified as Ido Ben Ari. When Klein went inside the restaurant he saw a 12-year-old boy who turned out to be Ben Ari’s son. “He was crying because he saw his father with blood.
“Before the attack they had been sitting there – the father and his wife, and a son and daughter, sitting together having fun.”
Another paramedic Avi Marcus said that one of the most heart-wrenching tasks was to help American tourists whose child had disappeared and was feared dead.
“There was a tourist family from America searching for their 10-year-old son. They had been sitting together, the shooting happened, and the son ran away.”
The parents “were hysterically running around – running around and searching”.
Marcus helped the parents to find their boy on a nearby street.
“He said ‘I ran away because I was scared to be shot or hurt.’ He was shivering and very disorientated.”
When Marcus arrived, “the restaurant looked like a hurricane went through it – there was blood, there were broken chairs and other awful things.
“The sounds were of people running to find shelter, running around with all types of stress symptoms, civilians were looking for the deceased.”
NATHAN JEFFAY
comments