Behind the Headlines: Mix of Israeli Society Felled by Suicide Bombing Attacks

As the 25 victims of Sunday’s two terrorist bombings in Jerusalem and Ashkelon were laid to rest this week, the grim statistics took on a human face as friends and family members recalled the last time they had seen their loved ones alive.

Even before the funerals, the Israeli public learned that one of the older victims was a Holocaust survivor; that another was a recent immigrant from the former Soviet Union; that a soldier killed in Jerusalem had already lost a brother; and that another soldier killed Sunday had recently picked out her wedding dress.

The bride-to-be, 20-year-old Hofit Ayash, was on leave before being discharged from the army.

She had gone back to her base to return her gear and to say goodbye to her army buddies.

After catching a bus from her parents’ home in Ashdod, Ayash arrived at Ashkelon Junction. Soon afterward, the bomb went off and she was killed instantly.

She had planned a June wedding.

“Instead of getting ready for your wedding, we’re getting ready for your funeral,” her mother tearfully told reporters. “This is a black year. Two weeks ago, my husband, Michael, lost his mother; a year ago, his father. Now he is burying a daughter.”

German-born Peretz Ganz, 61, lost his entire family in the Holocaust. Sent to France when he was 8 years old, he moved to Israel a decade later.

A resident of the Jerusalem neighborhood of Ein Kerem, he regularly took the No. 18 bus to Mount Herzl, where he drove his own bus route.

“When he didn’t arrive, we thought he had been in the explosion,” said a co- worker. “We were prepared for any kind of injury, any prognosis – but not to hear that he had died.”

“He was a real family man,” said Ganz’s friend Nadav Bar-Noy. “Losing his family in the Shoah strengthened Peretz’s resolve to live in Israel. How sad an ironic that he died this way.”

Boris Sharpolinshy, 64, had lived in Israel just nine months before the Jerusalem blast took his life.

Originally from Ukraine, he shared a small apartment with two roommates.

Described as a cultured, educated man with a passion for music and Israeli politics, Sharpolinsky was killed on his way to work.

“He always took that bus, and when I heard about the blast I began to worry,” said a close friend. “I couldn’t find him at work. Later, I identified his body at the forensic institute.”

“Boris found it hard to learn a new language and to deal with a lower standard of living,” the friend added.

“And now, ironically, when he’d found a job and was happy, this catastrophe struck.”

Another of Sunday’s victims was a more recent arrival from Ukraine.

Michael Yarigin, 16, was studying at Kibbutz Ma’barot, located near Netanya, as part of the Jewish Agency’s “Na’aleh 16” Project, a program designed for youngsters from the former Soviet Union who arrive in Israel without their parents.

He came to Jerusalem last Friday to visit his sister, Lila, 17, who was studying at the Israel Goldstein Youth Village under the same program.

He was killed on the No. 18 bus as he was traveling back to the Kibbutz. The bomb destroyed the bus near Jerusalem’s central bus station.

The family of Merav Nahum, a 19-year-old soldier from Jerusalem, learned of their daughter’s death from the television news.

As the first scenes of the Jerusalem bomb blast were broadcast, 8-year-old Ranana Nahum spotted her sister’s watch in the wreckage.

Merav’s younger brother, Hanan, died of a heart condition.

“The parents still haven’t recovered completely from Hanan’s death, and now Merav is gone,” said Shuli Sini, an aunt. “When Hunan died they couldn’t bear to live in the same house, so they moved. Perhaps now they’ll move again.”

Merav, who began her army service three months ago, was about to be assigned to an intelligence unit.

Six soldiers serving in her unit carried her flag-draped coffin to its resting place at Jerusalem’s Mount Herzl Military Cemetery.

For some, however, the sorrow was accompanied by feelings of relief.

Bebe Kramer, an American who has lived in the Jerusalem suburb of Ma’aleh Adumim for several years, was walking along Jaffa Road when the No. 18 bus blew up.

The next thing she knew, she was in Hadassah Hospital with relatively minor injuries.

“She doesn’t remember anything about the blast,” said her Jerusalem Post co- worker Joe Charlawf. “She just remembers waking up in the hospital with cuts on her face and splinters in her legs.

“I talked to her give minutes ago, and her spirits are high. She kept saying, `Baruch haShem (Thank God), I’m all right.”

Luckier still is the American immigrant who disembarked from the No. 18 bus just a couple of stops before it exploded – the second time he had narrowly escaped a bus bombing in the past couple of years.

“My husband isn’t in the country at the moment, so I’d rather not speak in his name,” his wife said in an interview. “He was upset when he learned that I had told the story to other people. He is very upset about the tragedy, but grateful to be alive.”