|
|
June 8, 2001/Sivan 17, 5761, Vol. 53, No.36
Am Yisrael Chai!
Vicki Cabot
Contributing Editor
It was the flags that got to me.
The creamy white fabric emblazoned in bold blue tenderly enfolded the slender bodies of terror's latest victims.
Sisters Julia and Yelena Nelimov, buried together, doubled the horror. Two bodies, two flags, two unnecessary deaths.
The Israeli flag, a proud symbol of hope, was supposed to be flapping smartly in the wind. Instead, it was a funeral shroud protecting the innocent dead as they were returned to the earth.
How awful. How painful. How fitting.
The searing photographs of the funerals of the people killed in the terrorist bombing of a popular Tel Aviv disco last Friday night repeated the scene over and over. Press reports told of the continuing file of mourners, wending their way from one funeral to the next, as they buried their sons and daughters, their sisters and brothers, their friends. At the Nelimov funeral, a photographer captured a heart-rending image of the sisters' mother caressing the flag-draped corpses before they were lowered into the ground.
It is every mother's nightmare. Every father's bad dream. The victims were teenagers - young, irrepressible, seemingly invulnerable. They had their whole lives ahead of them, and even living in Israel now, especially living in Israel now, they wanted to have fun. To go out with their friends. To dance a little. Drink a little. Flirt a little.
Only this time they were flirting with danger. The nightclub on the Tel Aviv beachfront was an appealing target for a suicide bomber to ply his nasty trade. Just after midnight, the joking, jostling crowd outside the Dolphin Disco exploded into a profusion of flying body parts, a cacophony of agonized screams. Survivors described the tumultuous scene in horror, still shaking in its aftermath.
The reverberations continued as friends and families dealt not only with the loss of their loved ones but the diminution in confidence in Israel's promise.
Many of the victims were Russian immigrants, part of the some 800,000 Russians who have made aliyah since 1989 and continue to arrive at a rate of some 5,000 a month. Most left their homeland in search of economic betterment, some following their children who had come first, lured by the promise of educational and professional opportunities as well as the freedom to practice their religion without discrimination. Even post-glasnost, being Jewish in the former Soviet Union could still be a liability and many sought a life where they would not have to submerge or apologize for their Jewishness.
Now, in Tel Aviv, on a balmy spring evening, their confidence had been shaken, their exuberance stilled. But their identity as Jews, if ever questioned, had been irrevocably determined by the terrorist's blast.
Even as families and friends cried, they expressed their resolve to prevail. Even as they mourned, they expressed hope for better times.
And even as they carried the children to their final resting places, wrapped in the blue and white of their adopted homeland, they reminded us that Israel still lives. They reminded us that despite the incredible costs, Israel is still our shining promise, our hope.
And they reminded us of what it means to be part of the Jewish people, to feel the pain of those who suffer, to share their inconsolable grief, and to join together with them in unity.
Am Yisrael Chai!
|
