Chronicle of the Survivors

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When terror strikes it leaves a trail of death and destruction that lingers for a lifetime.

The media may highlight the immediate effects of the incident, but when the spotlight is extinguished, and attention turns to other events, there remains the shattered lives of the survivors, or the victims families.

The chronicle of Netanya terror victims gives an important insight into their daily struggle of coping with the physical and psychological damage. The following will give a heart-wrenching glimpse into the lives of people who cannot escape the life-long tragedy of being known as a terror victim.

30 March 2003.

Panic, screams, bloodshed, shattered a sunny lunchtime at the London cafe on Netanya's pedestrian mall on Herzl Street.
The cafe was crowded with soldiers and civilians.
58 were rushed to hospital, including 20 year old soldier, Gil Koperman, who had approached the Palestinian suicide bomber. Islamic Jihad claimed credit for this bloody terror attack.
Incidentally, the blast took place just thirty yards from the office of the NETANYA
TERROR VICTIMS FUND, shaking the building

May 18 was a special day for Liliane. It was her 64th birthday. She decided to head for the Kanion Shopping Mall to buy herself a bunch of flowers.
At the entrance to the mall she came face to face with the terrorist. In an instance she had a feeling of dread and fear. That was the moment miliseconds before the huge explosion.
Over seventy pieces of shrapnel, and parts of the terrorists bones, ripped through her burning body.
Someone dragged her to the sidewalk and wrapped her burning body is something. That probably saved her life.
She screamed all the way to hospital and wanted to die.
Instead a team of surgeons removed the pieces of bone and metal from her body and, in a serious of operations, brought her back to her family.
Now, a once useful Liliane must walk with a heavy metal walking stick. She still needs future operations more than a year after the terror incident.
Each May 18 Liliane celebrates a double birthday. One for the day she was born. One for the day she escaped death.

Imagine being caught up in a suicide bombing. Imagine your feelings if you were an Ethiopian immigrant who had been struggling to survive in Israel. Imagine, further, that you are deaf and
mute!
How do you comprehend what has happened? How do you express your fears, your emotions, your feelings, to an outside world?
This was the fate of Gideon who was badly injured in the explosion that took place in the Netanya food market.
Months later Gideon, who lives with his illiterate mother in a poor district of Netanya, must face ongoing medical treatment.
He had not yet received his entitlements from the Government bodies, mainly due to his inability to apply for his needs.
Now we at Netanya Terror Victims Fund will ensure that he is represented and recognised.

VICTORIA immigrated to Israel with her husband, Arkady, and their one-year-old daughter, Shulamit, from the Ukraine twelve years ago. They looked forward to establishing a fresh life in the Jewish state. Arkady’s parents joined them a year later.
Today, 13-year-old Shulamit has a six-year-old sister, Rinat. Victoria works as a nurse.
Arkady worked as a chef in the Park Hotel and escaped with his life from the Passover massacre that hit his workplace that fateful Seder night.
But death was waiting for Arkady on May 19 in the local market when another suicide bomber carried out his mission while Arkady was buying groceries for his family. Arkady was killed, blown up by a Hamas terrorist.
The family lives in a three and a half roomed apartment in one of the poorer areas of Netanya. Despite their cramped conditions they made the best of their lives – until the terrible events of May 19.
Victoria stoically tries to get on with her life, mainly for the sake of her two young girls.
Arkady’s parents, however, are mourning their son – and blaming Victoria for his death. Victoria had asked Arkady to go to the market to buy vegetables for the family. So she, in the grieving minds of her in-laws, has replaced the suicide bomber in taking the blame for the death of Arkady.
The tension in the small household has become unbearable. The two girls are demanding that their mother lets them have a place of their own.
Victoria has been forced to try and find a place where she and her daughters can find some piece of mind.
Because she is part owner of a poor small apartment she is not entitled for State support to buy another place. Her in-laws do not wish to sell their apartment.
Meanwhile, Victoria is tensely waiting for her social workers to decide on her entitlement on a rental property.
It is likely that she will receive a subsidy of sorts but that she will be forced to pay the balance of the rental price. She must also furnish her flat.
She hopes that this move will remove some of the trauma in the lives of her family.

LIORA had just finalised her painful divorce proceedings.
They had agreed that she would buy out his share of their old apartment. She had just signed for a heavy mortgage so that she could stay there with their two young children.
She had the security of knowing that she had a good salary from the engineering company where she worked. She was ready to begin her new life.
Then she went to the local market to buy provisions.
The Palestinian terrorist blew himself up in the narrow alleyway. Liora would certainly have been killed had not Arkady Weiselman been standing between her and the suicide bomber.
Arkady died. Liora's life was saved by the doctors, but she is permanently scarred by the damage from the shrapnel and bomb parts.
Once Liora was a beautiful happy woman. Now she cries a lot.
She is trying to cope with her ongoing medical operations, small children, mounting debts, and an apartment badly in need of renovation and repair.
Life, suddenly, doesn't look so rosy.

ANNA is a pretty 24-year-old recent immigrant from the Ukraine. She is married and has two small children.
Things were always tough, financially, for this young family, since they had arrived in Israel.
He worked in a poorly paid manual job. She traveled daily to Raanana to work in a supermarket storeroom. Though not paying a good wage, she enjoyed her work and the company of the other workers.
To supplement their income, Anna also found work as a part-time waitress. She was pleased to have been given a job at Passover in the Park Hotel in Netanya.
As they prepared to serve the guests at the Seder night service another waitress remarked that a strange looking man that had entered the hall could be a terrorist.
Anna looked up just as the man detonated his explosive belt.
Anna was unconscious for three days. Surgeons removed three shards of glass from her stomach, another from her chest.
They also reconstructed her nose and removed nails from her body, including her right eye. She now has a glass eye.
Anna is determined to get on with her life. Supported by her husband, she continues to give, and receive, love from her two kids.
Despite her inabilities she is holding on to her job in Raanana on a part-time basis.
Her reduced income is supplemented by benefits received from the Israeli National Insurance.
It is summer in Israel and the children do not have a kindergarten to go to until the new season begins in September.
Again, National Insurance is covering part of the cost of a child-minder while the parents work.
However, Anna and her husband are finding life difficult on their low wages, and their children have not gone to a local summer camp, an annual vacation ritual enjoyed by most Israelis kids.
Not only that, Anna does not know if her kids will be allowed back into their kindergartens later in the year.
She still owes 4200 shekels for three months unpaid attendance for the months that she was hospitalized and receiving medical treatment.

ELAD made Aliyah to Israel from Ethiopia together with his parents, eight brothers, and two sisters. He served in the army, but his lack of education meant that he was always going to work in menial or manual jobs.
He had found work in the local market filling the stall and selling vegetables. He was happy in this simple work. It gave him pride and self-respect to bring a little money home to his parents at the end of the week.
He remembers the explosion, the smoke, and the smell, and being thrown to the ground.
He remembers lying among the wreckage and looking up in wonder at the huge hole that once was the ceiling of the market.
Elad was unable to move. Eventually, they rushed him to hospital. He is still in Tel HaShomer Hospital. He will be there for four months undergoing operations and medical treatment.
Typical of the filthy bombs constructed by Palestinian terrorists, Elad became a human pincushion to nails and screws, some of which are still embedded in his body, over two months after the explosion.
Elad will leave hospital in a wheelchair. He will need to have three sessions a week of physiotherapy.
Elad is a simple, but broken man. Not just physically. He has lost his self-respect.
He does not know what he will do with himself. He will never be able to stand. His hands and arms are damaged. Manually, how can he be useful? Unless he finds a role for himself he will always consider himself inadequate.
Together with his sister, Gila, we are searching for a suitable small apartment for him. We will need to furnish Elad’s new home so that this young man can have a comfortable base in which to face his future.

How terror can destroy a family is tragically described in the lives of the Fried family.
Traditionally, the family came together in a Netanya hotel to Passover in a communal Seder service.
Andre and Idit Fried were anxious to get to the Park Hotel to meet Idit’s elderly parents who were arriving from out of town with close friends.
Their children, 17 year old son, Tom, and 20 year old daughter, Shirley, said they would follow on in another car.
When the children arrived at the hotel they found pandemonium.
The delay in setting out had saved their lives.
However, their father, mother, and grandparents were killed in the terror attack which became known as the Passover massacre.

This family were not alone in experiencing a wholesale tragedy.
The Ben Aroya family also gathered at the Park Hotel to enjoy the Passover Seder.
Their family table was in the middle of the room. It took the brunt of the explosion.
Shimon Ben Aroya was killed outright.
His wife, Corinne, was blown off her feet as a shower of nails and ball bearings punctured her body. One piece entered to the right of her nose and is, today, lodged in the back of her head. Another entered her chest and is embedded in her back. A third broke her ribs. Others peppered her arm and body.
Their nine year old son, Elad, needed plastic surgery to his back.
Their thirteen year old daughter, Hilla, suffered shrapnel entries to her neck and colon.
Their eldest daughter, 20 year old Sherry, will be hospitalized for many more months with serious multiple injuries. A nail entered her right eye and exited through the left side of her brain. She is struggling to regain her speech faculties.
A barrage of shrapnel from the dirty bomb has punctured her body leaving her to fight for the use of her legs and lower body.
As if this were not enough for the family, the list goes on……
Corinne’s father has undergone three eye operations. Her mother was blasted with shrapnel which has left her with a damaged colon.
Her brother had a metal piece break his law. His seven year old daughter, Ravid, suffered back injuries. His five year old son, Gavriel, is still in hospital with serious injuries to his head and main arteries.
The pushchair of their twin one year olds, Eden and David, was blasted with shrapnel. Yet, miraculously, the two babies escaped without a scratch.
The lives of this family, more than four months after the event, is taken up with medical and psychological treatment, and visits to hospitals and to the Shimon’s grave.

Linking this family in their fate is 34 year old Carina. This mother of two was on her second day of work as a waitress at the Park Hotel to supplement her income. She escorted the Ben Aroya family to their places in the center of the hall.
She is convinced that she would have been killed had not Corinne’s brother asked her for highchairs for the twin babies. She had only taken a few strides when the blast swept her off her feet.
Her only thought was to get up and find her mobile phone to tell her family not to worry. She could not find her phone and staggered out of the ruins of the hall.
She noticed that her clothes were full of blood, but dismissed this thinking that the blood was from other people. She decided to walk home, but someone insisted that she go into one of the ambulances that had quickly arrived at the scene.
She was taken to a hospital in Hadera where she was diagnosed as having a bleeding stomach. The doctors requested her signature prior to operating on her. She thought that this was unnecessary, but the doctors told her that her injuries were so serious that, if they did not operate she would die.
Carina spent a month in hospital.

NETANYA TERROR VICTIMS FUND will continue to add to the Chronicle of the Survivors.
We will bring you more true-life situations and report to you on the progress made by our terror victims.
We shall, hopefully, bring you encouraging stories and successes as you continue to support our efforts.
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