A commemoration was held this week for the 21 Israelis and the single Dutch victim who died in the Oct. 19 suicide bombing of a bus in the heart of Tel Aviv.
Among those attending Sunday’s ceremony at the Ashkenazic synagogue in The Hague were Dutch Interior Minister Hans Dijkstal, Israeli Ambassador Michael Bawly and the parents of 25-year-old Dutch physiotherapist Rinier Yurest, who died in the blast.
The commemoration was organized jointly by the Ashkenazic and Liberal rabbis of The Hague and Rotterdam.
Visibly moved, Bawly said the victims of the bus bombing “fell not in the defense of Israel, but because there is a monster that is blinded by a morbid hatred of the Jewish people.”
The Islamic fundamentalist Hamas movement, which is militantly opposed to the Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative, claimed responsibility for the bus attack.
Addressing the bereaved parents of Yurest, who was not Jewish, Bawly said, “Your son has been murdered only because he wanted to be with us.”
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