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Sbarro restaurant suicide bombing

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Sbarro restaurant suicide bombing
File:SbarroAfter1.jpg
LocationJerusalem
DateAugust 9 2001
2:00 pm –
TargetSbarro pizza restaurant
Attack type
suicide bomber
Deaths15
Injured130
PerpetratorsHamas

The Sbarro restaurant suicide bombing took place on August 9 2001 in Jerusalem, Israel.

At the time of the bombing, the Jerusalem branch of the Sbarro pizza restaurant chain was located at the corner of King George Street and Jaffa Road in Jerusalem, one of the busiest pedestrian crossings in Israel. Just before 2:00 p.m. on a summer holiday afternoon, when the restaurant was filled with customers and pedestrian traffic outside was at its peak, a suicide bomber thought to be carrying a rigged guitar case or wearing an explosive belt weighing 5 to 10 kilograms, containing explosives, nails, nuts and bolts, detonated his bomb.

In the blast 15 people (including 7 children) were killed, and 130 wounded. Both Hamas and the Islamic Jihad initially claimed responsibility[1], with Hamas claiming that the attack was in response to Israel's targeted assassination of Palestinian militants, including two leading Hamas commanders in Nablus, Jamal Mansour and Omar Mansour, ten days earlier.[2][3][4] Several Hamas members were subsequently captured by the authorities, tried, convicted and imprisoned. The suicide bomber who died in the course of carrying out the attack was later identified to be Izz al-Din Shuheil al-Masri from the Palestinian West Bank town of Aqabah. Izz al-Masri was 22 at the time and the son of a successful restaurant owner, and from an affluent land-owning family. He was escorted to the restaurant by Ahlam Tamimi, a 20-year-old female university student and part-time journalist, who had disguised herself as a Jewish tourist for the occasion. Ahlam Tamimi was sentenced to 16 life terms. She later commented that "I am not sorry for what I did" and does not recognize Israel’s existence[5]. The person who constructed the explosives was a man named Abdallah Barghouti. For his part in this and a string of other attacks, in which 66 civilians were killed, he was handed down 67 life sentences in 30 November 2004[6].

5 of the 15 people killed were a set of parents along with their three children (two other of their children survived).

Killed

The victims are:

  • Giora Balash, 60, from São Paulo, Brazil
  • Zvika Golombek, 26, from Karmiel, Israel
  • Shoshana Yehudit (Judy) Greenbaum, 31, from Passaic, New Jersey, USA
  • Tehila Maoz, 18, from Jerusalem, Israel
  • Frieda Mendelsohn, 62, from Jerusalem
  • Michal Raziel, 16, from Ramot, Jerusalem
  • Malka Chana (Malki) Roth, 15, from Ramot, Jerusalem (memorial) (originally from Melbourne, Australia)
  • Mordechai Schijveschuurder, 43, from Neria, Matte Binyamin
  • Tzira Schijveschuurder, 41, from Neria
  • Ra'aya Schijveschuurder, 14, from Neria
  • Avraham Yitzhak Schijveschuurder, 4, from Neria
  • Hemda Schijveschuurder, 2, from Neria
  • Lily Shimashvili, 33, from Jerusalem
  • Tamara Shimashvili, 8, from Jerusalem
  • Yocheved Shoshan, 10, from Jerusalem

The death toll would likely have been much higher, except that the building had recently been retrofitted to improve its structural integrity. The building was built with the same "Pal-Kal" construction technique deemed responsible for the Versailles wedding hall disaster less than three months before. Although not required to do so, owner Noam Amar added extra support columns on the advice of city inspectors.[7]

Israeli response

The Israeli response to the attack, was the shutting down of the unofficial Palestinian "foreign office" in Jerusalem, at the Orient House.[8]

Palestinian exhibit

File:Napalestinian.jpg
Palestinian students at the Al Najah exhibition

After the suicide bombing, Palestinian university students at the An-Najah University in the West Bank city of Nablus created an exhibition celebrating the one year anniversary of the Second Intifada.[9][10] The exhibit’s main attraction was a room-sized re-enactment of the bombing at Sbarro. The installation featured broken furniture splattered with fake blood and human body parts as well as an idealized portrait of the suicide bomber holding a Koran and an automatic rifle. Also featured in the exhibition is a room with mannequins dressed as suicide bombers carrying automatic rifles in one hand and the Koran in the other, and aside another mannequin dressed up to resemble an Orthodox Jew with a taped voice quoting from the Muslim Hadith[11]:: "O believer, there is a Jewish man behind me. Come and kill him."[9] The entrance to the exhibition was illustrated with a mural depicting the bombing. The exhibit was later shut-down by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.[12]

See also

References

  1. ^ Suicide bombing at the Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem August 9, 2001, Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs
  2. ^ Jerusalem bombing: A war increasing in cruelty, fuelled by lust for revenge, The Independent, August 10, 2001.
  3. ^ 'The street was covered with blood and bodies: the dead and the dying', The Guardian, August 10, 2001.
  4. ^ Who carried out suicide bombing?, The Guardian, August 10, 2001.
  5. ^ Sbarro terrorist 'not sorry', Ynetnews, March 27 2006
  6. ^ Abdallah Barghouti sentenced to 67 life sentences
  7. ^ Hillel Fendel (May 31, 2007). "Inventor of Pal-Kal Sentenced to Four Years". Arutz Sheva. Retrieved 2008-01-18.
  8. ^ Yaacov Lozowick, Right to Exist, 2003, p.20
  9. ^ a b "Gruesome exhibit marks anniversary of uprising". The Associated Press. September 24, 2001. Retrieved 2006-08-09. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); line feed character in |date= at position 19 (help)
  10. ^ "An Exhibit on Campus Celebrates Grisly Deed". The New York Times. September 25, 2001. Retrieved 2006-08-09. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); line feed character in |date= at position 19 (help)
  11. ^ Translation of Sahih Muslim, Book 41 Number 6981
  12. ^ Arafat closes 'suicide bombing' art show, BBC, September 26, 2001.
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