Sefer one of the victims was learning
Victim lies dead on the floor of library of the Mercaz yeshiva
Islam Attacks: 8 Dead in Massacre at Jewish School in Jerusalem Atlas Shrugs, March 16, 2008
Among the thousands of emails I have received in support of our anti-jihad ad campaign, the most powerful come from those who have been most affected by jihad. Jesse Nieto recently wrote me -- his young son and sixteen of his shipmates were murdered by jihadists aboard the U.S.S.Cole.
Yesterday I received this from Dr. Naftali Moses, who knows jihadi savagery firsthand. He writes:
Nothing can prepare one for the loss of a child. Nothing can prepare a parent to hear the news of a terror attack and slowly discover that his son is among the eight shot down in cold blood. Nothing can prepare a father for the heartrending pain that burying his firstborn son brings. On March 6, 2008, my sixteen-year-old son, Avraham David, was killed while studying in the Mercaz HaRav library in Jerusalem. On that day my life changed forever.
In the first year of mourning my son, I often felt torn between the intimacy of loss and its public expression. In one tragic moment, my son had become a “martyr,” and I, a “bereaved parent.” Having already buried his body, I worried how I could ever preserve his memory under the frequently too-bright lights of public attention. Mourning Under Glass explores the tensions between memory and memorial, between private pain and public mourning. Can any of our attempts at memorial adequately recall an extinguished life? Can any give voice to the nearly ineffable pain of loss?
I cannot imagine the indescribable horror of this. Today Dr. Moses wrote a kind note to me in support of my work against jihadi savagery, including this:
Dear Ms. Geller,
I have followed your fight against jihad with much interest and feel that you may be interested in my work (here is a recent book review from the Jerusalem Post) which explores its very real consequences. I am interested in spreading the word about the horrid costs of terror.
Just a week after my 16-year-old son and his schoolmates were shot down, murdered in cold blood while sitting in a Jerusalem library, I was interviewed on Israeli television. I was asked whether I was angry at the attacker. I responded that no— I felt that anger was too weak a response to such horror. I was just stunned at the sheer, unadulterated evilness of such an act. I was shocked that such true wickedness could even exist. But it does. As sure as the puddles of innocent blood that pooled across the stone floor that night—it does. And it needs to be defeated, so that other fathers will not need to bury their murdered children ever again.
All the best,
Dr. Naftali Moses, PhD
