Wednesday, as this paper was being readied for press, Israel buried American-born physician David Applebaum, director of the department of emergency medicine of Shaare Zedek Hospital in Jerusalem.
He was buried alongside his daughter, Nava, whose funeral took place on what was to have been her wedding day. The two had shared a father-daughter chat in Jerusalem’s Café Hillel, and were killed along with five others there Tuesday by a suicide bomber.
Ironically, Applebaum had just returned to Israel from New York, where he addressed a symposium for area hospital staff on mass casualty medicine.
By all accounts, Applebaum, 51, was a tzaddik, a righteous man. According to Shaare Zedek, he founded the Terem 24-hour emergency clinic in Jerusalem and introduced the concept of using computer technology to track emergency room patients and streamline operations and waiting time.
Most important, at Shaare Zedek he worked with a multicultural staff to treat men, women and children without regard to their religion or politics. Reuters reported that thousands of victims of terrorist bombings whose lives Applebaum had helped save gathered to mourn at his funeral.
As I rail against the loss of Applebaum and the 14 other Israelis killed in what were two separate suicide attacks in Israel on Tuesday, I find that I don’t like myself very much.
While trying to understand the unfathomable yet again, I am shocked by the intensity of my thoughts of revenge. I am ashamed to be even thinking them, much less to print them here.
And, yet, I am tired of those who consistently would have Israel apologize for its right to defend its citizens, who justify America’s hunt for terrorists yet condemn Israel for doing so. And I am weary of those who cannot see the difference between the deliberate killing of people like Applebaum and his daughter, and Israel’s attempt to avoid civilian casualties whenever possible when defending its citizens.
As the daughter of Holocaust survivors, I am repelled by a world that asks me to defend my outrage at the senseless loss of Jewish life and my thanks to those who would seek to prevent it.
But as a former left-of-Labor voter in Israel, I am appalled at my loss of hope, and what seems to be my diminishing sense of compassion for the innocents among the Palestinians, who have been political pawns for decades at the hands of so many.
So as the news continues to unfold this week, I pray for the souls of those who lost their lives and of those in leadership positions who must find a way to do the seemingly impossible task of ending the bloodshed. At the same time, I pray that the continued reign of terror in Israel will not cause me to lose my own soul as well, but rather to try to emulate the characteristics that made David Applebaum such a righteous man.
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