Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on November 2, 2014

As Violence Flares in Israel, Grief Comes to Our Shores

Yonatan Sindel/Flash 90

Holy Child: The grave of Chaya Zissel Braun, the infant who was killed in a terror attack.

Jerusalem In October, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict claimed two American citizens over just three days. Three-month-old Chaya Zissel Braun and 14-year-old Orwa Hammad were born in Jerusalem and Ramallah, respectively, but both held citizenship in the United States.

Chayas parents were American Jews who immigrated to Israel. Orwas parents were Palestinian Muslims who immigrated to the United States and then returned to the Israeli-occupied West Bank to raise their children. Both families migrations reflected their desire to live lives steeped in their religious heritage. They then found themselves the inheritors of the conflict.

Chaya and Orwa were killed about 19 miles away from each other, Chaya in a Jerusalem terrorist attack and Orwa in clashes with the military in the West Bank. Their deaths are singular, but they both represent the fears of Jews and Palestinians. With increasing unrest in Jerusalem since the July murder of Muhammad Abu Khdeir, allegedly by Israeli extremists, Jews say they fear a third intifada will emanate from the city, turning street corners into war zones. Palestinians say that stepped-up Israeli military activity in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, along with Israels invasion of Gaza last summer, has already left them living in war zones, and that the fear never subsides.

Through its financial and political support for Israel, and its diplomatic interventions on behalf of a two-state solution to the conflict, America has long been deeply involved in this struggle. But the deaths of Chaya and Orwa show how individual American lives are also increasingly wrapped up in the fate of Israel and the Palestinian territories as the conflict drags on and the two diasporas grow. When these lives are lost, grief spans the Atlantic.

In the last picture taken of Chaya Zissel Braun, on October 22, she is staring wide-eyed into the distance, a pink beanie tucked over her head, the camel-colored stones and green shrubs of Jerusalems Western Wall a blur in the background. It was Chayas first and only visit to Judaisms holiest site, recalled her maternal grandfather, Shimshon Halperin. He was sitting in the basement of a run-down apartment in Romema, a West Jerusalem neighborhood of colorless residential buildings interspersed with sprays of shockingly pink bougainvillea. Upstairs, Chayas parents, Shmuel Elimelech Braun, 24, and Channy Braun, 22, were receiving visitors who had come for shiva, the weeklong Jewish mourning period.

Three-month-old Chaya and her parents were on their way home from the Western Wall when an East Jerusalem Palestinian named Abelrahman al-Shaludi rammed his car into the Ammunition Hill light rail station where they were standing. City police and the U.S. Department of State have described the crash as a deliberate terrorist attack. Chaya flew 11 yards from her stroller onto the pavement and later died in the hospital. Eight others were injured. On October 26 an Ecuadorian tourist also died from her wounds. Shaludi was killed by the police.

Since his granddaughters death, Halperin, who lives in Monsey, New York, has become the public face of the tragedy. Wearing a trim black suit, and with his short side curls tucked behind his ears, he showed off the picture of Chayas trip to the Western Wall. Its a visit that he has come to see as the very crux of her short existence.

Read the original here:
A Tale of Two American Tragedies

Category: Jewish American Heritage Month
Tags: