Six of the 13 victims of Friday’s terrorist bombing in the heart of Jerusalem were buried today. Funeral services were held at the Sanhkria Cemetery here this morning for Michael and Rifka Ben Yitzhak, who had lived in Jerusalem’s Neve Granot quarter. An entire family, Meir Zimmerman, 35, his wife Rosa, 28 and their 11-year-old daughter, Ahava, were buried in Haifa. A Christian service was held in Nazareth today for Daoud Khoury, 50, one of the four Arab victims of the blast.
The other dead were identified as Yosef Amar, 28; David Cohen, 46; and Yoram Aivovi, 41, all of Jerusalem; and Nahiza Mohammed Hamed, 25, or East Jerusalem; her aunt, Fatima Moussa Hamed, 53, and a relative, Mohammed Abu Khadija, both from Amman, Jordan, who had come to Jerusalem for Nahiza’s wedding. The 13th victim, an 11-year-old Jewish boy whose father was in a critical condition in a hospital, was not identified by name.
The Ben Yitzhak’s, an Anglo-American couple who immigrated to Israel several years ago and were the parents of two small children, were buried in services conducted by the army chaplaincy corps. The government was represented by MK Binyamin Halevi.
Ben Yitzhak, formally Isaacs, was born in Glasgow, educated at Oxford University and worked as a stockbroker in London before he settled in Israel in 1970. His brother, Jeremy Isaacs, is a prominent British television and film producer. Mrs. Ben Yitzhak, the former Rifka Soifer, of Brooklyn, New York, came to Israel several years ago with her parents, Israel and Margaret Soifer who live in Jerusalem. The couple was out shopping Friday when explosives concealed under an abandoned refrigerator detonated in Jerusalem’s crowded Zion Square, killing them instantly.
The Zimmerman family came from Eilat. They were buried in Haifa where Mrs. Zimmerman’s parents live. The Mayor and Chief Rabbi of Eilat attended the services. The government was represented by MK Amnon Linn. Rabbi Gad Navon, the deputy chief chaplain of the army officiated. The graves are in the Old Cemetery of Haifa where other victims of Arab terror have been buried during the past two decades.
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