A story like too many stories (January 2003)
I recently went on a solidarity trip to Israel with 70 other Italian journalists, politicians, professors and ordinary citizens. Ouri’s story is just one of the stories we were told.
Since the beginning of the second Intifada, 700 victims have died from acts of terrorism committed against civilians in Isreal. Taking into account all the due demographic proportions, that’s as if 7,000 people in Italy or 35,000 in the US had died at the cinema, at the coffee shop, in a restaurant or a supermarket, on a subway or at a bus stop, in the last two years. There is no one in Israel who hasn’t been touched first hand by tragedy, who hasn’t lost a loved one to the blight of terrorism. Whether it’s a father or a son, a mother or a daughter, a grandfather or a grandson, a husband or a wife, a neighbor, a schoolmate, or a colleague, everyone in Israel has his own victim to mourn.
A common thread that connects the victims of terrorism to the victims of any calamity is the circumstance of chance and the temptation to say or to think “if only they had left a little earlier, if only they’d gone to another restaurant…” However, the Israelis no longer torture themselves with such “if onlys.” Even the Baruch family has its “if only” that it refuses, though, accepting the fatality of certain concurrences. Instead of thinking of the death of their daughter as a loss, they prefer to think of her life as a gift that God bestowed on them for 26 years.
Ouri Baruch was born in Nice to a family of Zionists, his father a survivor of the concentration camp at Buchenwald. At 17, he left France on his own to go to Israel. Thanks to the Franco-Israeli military accords, he completed his military duty as a parachutist during the Six Day War. In 1979, he was sent to Belgium to attend to the young Zionist movement in that country. In 1972, he married Francine and three children were born. In 1981, he returned with his family to Israel where his fourth child was born.
On September 19, 2001 the Baruch family was gathered together at Ouri and Francine’s house at Kiryat Arba for the New Year holiday of Rosh Hashanah. Among them were their daughter Sarit Amrani, 26, her husband Shai, and their grandchildren Zoar, 4, Ziv, 2, and Raz, only 3 months old. That evening, following the festivities, the daughter’s family wanted to leave for their home at Nokdim, a rural town near Mount Herodian on the border of the Judean desert. Francine convinced them to spend the night saying it would be safer to drive in the daylight. So the young family spent the night and left for Nokdim at dawn.
At eight o’clock the following morning, Ouri received a phone call from Shai’s mother. She said that she’d heard on the radio that there was a terrorist attack on the road to Nokdim. She had tried to phone their children at home, but there was no answer. Ouri phoned Francine who worked in a medical office. The top floor of her building was a military radio command station. Francine went up to the top floor to speak with the military people and then she phoned her husband: “Come right away. It’s the kids.”
It had happened only minutes earlier: Along the road home a car had pulled up next to theirs. Shai rolled down his window to ask the occupants of the other car if they were lost or if they needed some assistance. They answered with a burst of bullets. The first one hit Ouri’s daughter straight in the heart and she died on the spot. Three bullets destined for Ouri’s three grandchildren miraculously missed their mark. Shai got 6 of the shots: 4 in his throat, 1 in the heart, and 1 in his lung. After 13 hours of surgery and several weeks in coma, when Shai regained consciousness and saw Sarit’s father, the first words he pronounced were, “Forgive me. I wasn’t able to save your daughter.”
Several months later an association for the victims of terrorism phoned Ouri to say that his daughter’s assassin was in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. They asked him if he wanted them to appeal to the supreme court to stop the negotiations for extradition that were underway with the European Union. Ouri said yes, of course, and provided them with all of the necessary papers to present his case. Two days later he received an answer: The case was denied for “political reasons.” Today, Ibrahim Abayad, Sarit’s assassin, is in Rome. He is one of the 13 terrorists that the European Union accepted to host and disperse among their members as a solution to the impasse of the occupation of the church that Christians believe was built on Christ’s birth site.
At first, all 13 terrorists were supposed to be harbored in Italy. Arrangements had been made between the Franciscan brothers of the Nativity and the Vatican. Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi wasn’t at all happy to learn of this behind his back diplomacy and suggested that it shouldn’t be Italy, but the European Union to take on such a grave responsibility. I’m convinced that Berlusconi was certain that the European Union would let the 13 Palestinians drop like hot potatoes and that some other solution would have been found. Instead, the EU opted to accept this questionable mission as its grand debut in executing a common foreign policy! During the preparations for the reception and distribution of the terrorists, there was much discussion as to “how many?” and for “how long?”, but no one asked the most important question of all: “How come?”
January 2003
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