38 Israeli Children Murdered in Terrorist Attacks;
158 Left Orphaned

Communicated by Minister Tzipi Livni and the Government Press Office

Jerusalem------September 25.......One hundred and seventy-seven Israelis have been killed and 1,743 have been injured in terrorist attacks since the current wave of Palestinian violence began on 29.9.2000. Civilians have been the majority of those killed (128) and injured (1,216). Thirty children (under the age of 18) have been killed in attacks while 272 have been injured. One hundred and fifty-eight children (under the age of 18) have been left orphans.

Following is a representative – not exhaustive – summary of the foregoing:

On 13.11.2000, Sarah Leisha was murdered in a shooting attack near Ofra. She left five children, aged eight to 15.

On 20.11.2000, a roadside bomb exploded alongside a bus carrying children from Kfar Darom. Two people were killed in the attack: Miriam Amitai, 35, left four children, aged 10 to 14; Gavriel Biton, 34, left six children, aged four months to 11. Eleven others were injured, including eight children, most of whom were severely injured. Three children of the Noga family were among the injured. Eight-year-old Tehilla was severely injured; her sister Orit, 12, and brother Yisrael, 7, were also injured.

On 22.11.2000, a car-bomb exploded in central Hadera killing two people: Meir Bahrame, 35, and father of three (a seven-year-old girl and twin five-year-old boys), and Shoshana Weiss, 21. Sixty-one people, including children and young people, were injured, including one-year-old Tarah Abu Hussein from the nearby Israeli Arab community of Furedeis.

On 8.12.2000, Rina Didovsky, 39, from Beit Haggai, was murdered in a shooting attack while traveling in a vehicle carrying teachers to school. She left six children, aged one-and-a-half to 17.

On 31.12.2000, Talia and Binyamin Kahane were murdered in a shooting attack as they drove in their car along with their six children, aged two-months to 11, who were injured in the attack.

On 1.3.2001, a terrorist detonated a bomb in a taxi at Mei Ami junction. Claude Knapp, 29, an immigrant from Chile, was killed; nine people were injured.

On 4.3.2001, a suicide-terrorist exploded a bomb in the heart of the Netanya open-air market killing Naftali Dean, 81, Shlomit Ziv, 58, and Yevgenya Malchin, 70. Eighty people, including children and their parents, were injured in the blast.

On 26.3.2001, a Palestinian sniper shot and murdered 10-month-old Shalhevet Pass and wounded her father in Hebron’s Avraham Avinu neighborhood.

On 27.3.2001, two bombs exploded in Jerusalem. In the first incident, in the morning, a car-bomb exploded next to a bus carrying children to school in the Talpiyot commercial section, wounding nine people. The second incident occurred at 13:00 when a suicide-terrorist attempted to board a bus full of (mainly) school children from the Rene Cassin school. Thirty people, most of them children and including a two-year-old baby, were wounded.

On 28.3.2001, Eliran Rosenberg-Zayat, 15, and Naftali Lanzkorn, 13, were killed when a suicide-terrorist blew himself up at a petrol station near the community of Neveh Yamin. Four other youths, aged 12-16, were injured.

On 22.4.2001, a suicide-terrorist blew himself up at a crowded bus stop in Kfar Saba. Dr. Mario Goldin, 53, was killed. Dr. Goldin left a widow and three orphans. Fifty-one people were injured, including a 14-year-old youth who was critically wounded.

On 24.4.2001, a car-bomb exploded in the Or Yehuda open-air market injuring eight people, including two children.

On 28.4.2001, Shlomo Elmakias, 20, was shot to death as he drove his car on Highway #65 in Wadi Ara, after the assailant asked him if he was Jewish. Four other people who were in the car were injured, including two young women, aged 16 and 17, respectively.

On 1.5.2001, Assaf Hershkovitz, 30, was shot and murdered from an ambush near Ofra. His father Aryeh had been similarly shot and murdered on 29.1.2001. Assaf left two sons, aged four and five, respectively.

On 18.5.2001, a suicide-terrorist blew himself up at the entrance to the Lev Hasharon shopping mall in Netanya, killing Tirza Polonsky, 66; Miriam Waxman, 51; David Yarkoni, 53; Yulia Tratiakova, 21; and Vladislav Sorokin, 34.

On 1.6.2001, 21 young people were killed when a suicide-terrorist blew himself up at the entrance to the Dolphinarium discotheque in Tel Aviv. One hundred and twenty young people were injured.

On 11.6.2001, five-month-old Yehuda Shoham died of injuries he suffered when his parents’ car was stoned on 5.6.2001.

On 9.8.2001, 14 people – half of them children – were killed when a suicide-terrorist blew himself up at the Sbarro restaurant in downtown Jerusalem. One hundred and ten people – most of them under 18 – were injured. Mordecai and Tzira Schijveschuurder and three of their children, Ra’aya, 14; Avraham, 4; and Hemda, 2; were killed. Two other daughters, Leah, 8, and Chaya, 7, were injured. Lily Shimashvili, 33, a new immigrant from Georgia, and her daughter Tamara, 8, were also killed. Lily Shimashvili left a three-year-old son.