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Articles by Chezi Goldberg
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GOD HELP US
Do you know where El Khader is? Or Bethlehem? They used to be names in the news to me. Now, I know where they are. Firsthand. I drove past them in January, when I was in Israel. Not to worry. I was safe, riding in a bullet proof bomb protected bus sponsored by the community of Beitar Ilit. Free ride? No.The price our family paid was dear. One life. Our brother's. We were in Israel to sit shivah. My 41 year old baby brother, Chezi, was murdered by a neighbor from Bethlehem.

I am told to be a good speaker, I need to tell at least one joke. In that vein, How many fanatic muslims does it take to kill a minyan. Only one when he climbs aboard a commuter bus in Israel. You're not laughing. Neither am I. A twenty four year old employed PNA officer, the age of my sons, took the bible literally, "V'ahavtah l'reachah Kamocha," "love thy neighbor as yourself." Ali Jaara rode the bus until it reached the final destination he chose for it, Aza Street, then blew it to bits.

Picturing items on packaging exactly how they are to be used is called Idiot Proof marketing. Let me take the guesswork out of your understanding the real threat of terrorism, civilians live with, in Israel, America, too.

Hypothetically, join me for square bagel and coffee at Cosi's. Upon exiting this synagogue, climb aboard a bus and head towards Massachusetts Avenue. Turn left towards Dupont Circle where I live, ten minutes away. You'll pass the Australian Embassy, Burke's statue, Johanssens, Planned Parenthoods headquarters. Along the way, you'll see tourists and lawyers, activists and more lawyers, nonprofits and even more lawyers. Then almost before you reach the roundabout, wave to the brown bricked building that used to house the Saudi embassy. Kaboom. You're dead. No coffee. No bagel.

ZAKA, the volunteer body rescue and recovery group responding to bomb sites, calls the bus ticket you would have bought a one-way ticket to terror. It was my brother's last ride. He boarded Bus 19. The next thing our family knew, his neshamah, his soul, is touring, showing America up close. That's what hate does. It kills innocent civilians. Dads with little children.

National law enforcement is slowly adressing terrorists can be any one of the people you passed from here to Dupont Circle. I interviewed a DC officer who dispelled the myth Intelligence knows who the enemies are. He said, no longer. "Tachlis hayedia shelo neida." "The end result of knowledge is the knowledge that we know nothing."

Upon seeing the twisted carnage of Bus 19 on CNN, I had wished out loud, the dead did not suffer. Later that afternoon, my middle son, sobbing, broken hearted, located me, "Mom, Chezi was murdered on the bus bombing today." Jordan, who went to Israel the summer before, took the last photo of his Uncle alongside his aunt and cousins, at the same bus stop Chezi left from that fated morning. Our family became one of almost 1000 of the past three years, who can answer the Netaneh Tokef's question, "Who shall live and who shall die? Yechezkel Chezi Scotty Goldberg, from Toronto Canada, was senselessly murdered by a terrorist one year older than my JZ.

My brother's wife finished mourning her father on Tuesday. To make her smile again, Chezi annointed Wednesday "Shifra's day." They sat and talked. Shifra said every time she thought they spoke enough, Chezi found something more to discuss. Those last 24 hours became their lifetime together. Chezi had missed the atrocities of the No.2 bus, Sbarro Pizza, Moment Café. It was a matter of tragic reality, he wrote, the bullet with his name on it would catch up, when God was ready to take him home. God saved him for that morning to draw world attention to the fact John Wolf, the US Roadmap to Peace envoy, was meeting with Prime Minister Sharon in Jerusalem, one block from Aza. Now the world is hearing from me, bomb murder attempts spike when US envoys are in town.

Morning rush hour. Thursday. My brother went to work and never came home. A young woman sitting further back in the bus recalls he was reading Psalms. The depravity of hate who rose to stand beside my brother, laughed as he swiped at the sefer, book, in Chezi's hands. A high pitched whine. A sear of white light. Eardrums ruptured. Blood and body flew everywhere. On to rooftops. Into trees. The kneewall, next to the bus, tore apart. Kneewalls can be rebuilt. Bodies cannot.

Wolf was airlifted to safety within 1 half hour. ZAKA volunteers took half a day to collect teeth, arms, heads, blood, skin bits from the site. I read a father patting his daughter's hair to comfort her, realized the flecks stuck to his hand were skin from the murdered.

There is no wonder, I dread riding the Metro in DC. I hesitate to ride subways in NY. I fear the long corridors with no easy route to escape. I find myself watching everyone, remembering details of moments as they happen. I don't want to be caught off guard when it is time. If I survive, then maybe I can tell another sister, her brother's last moments.

My sister-in-law says the phone company confirmed she and Chezi spoke 6 minutes before his murder. Text messages get replayed. His voice answers his office phone, cell. The curiosity about last minutes is not morbid. They add up in our trying to hold on to our loved one. In asking what page of Psalms he was reading, what paragraph, I search for understanding the senseless act that ended his life. There is tremendous pain knowing Chezi saw he was a dead man when he looked up into Death's eyes. I weep. There was nothing I could do to protect my brother from dying alone, knowing his last thoughts were for his wife, his children ages 18 months to 16 years old. Most of the men from ZAKA who responded to the tragedy knew Chezi from his work as a psychologist, radio show host, columnist, friend, and neighbor. One ZAKA volunteer told me, at the Hague, "I kissed him on his forehead, Carrie." I sobbed, openly, outside the International Court of Justice. The fence the Peace Palace voted against, could have saved him. Psalms, ironically, are poems written by King David, the man who slew Goliath with a slingshot and a stone. Maybe Bus 19, is Chezi's slingshot, a hand from the grave, turning the tide of anti-semitism, bringing Jews and Christians together as it travels.

To make my difference, I'm starting small. I want the words SUICIDE BOMBER removed from media and political vernacular. SUICIDE BOMBER is a fanatical Islamic creation intended to justify the brutal act that took my brother's life. SUICIDE is the act of taking of one's own life; homicide is the accidental taking of another's life. Murder is the deliberate intent to kill. Plain and simple, Ali Jaara is a Bomb Murderer.

Jaara could have turned to Chezi and said I need help. Chezi was a miracle worker at sorting souls of all religions. Jaara was a coward who chose to covertly climb on Bus 19, wired to explode, laced with pieces of construction site debris large enough to cut off two heads at a time and grown men in half. This is not martyrdom. Jaara could have said no to the late Hamas leader Sheikh Abd-al Aziz al-Rantis who ordered the hit on that bus. That would have been martyrdom. Jaara left 12 families grieving that morning- his own along with the Goldbergs, Tzfiras, Daroms, Itachs, Balhasans, Kifiles, Bunders, Bonehs, Florescus, Hondiashvilis, and Gamrils. Eliminating the words SUICIDE BOMBERS, replacing them with the correct reference, BOMB MURDERER, may be a step in the direction to educate people the nature of the enemy around us. While in DC, consider taking a cab ride to the new Saudi Embassy. Look at the faces of architects plotting the death of our nation. Stare good and hard at the facade of the Embassy, cloaking hate in a venomous spew they call Free Speech. American journalist Kenneth Timmerman interviewed Sheikh al-Buraik, host of Saudi government's. Ponder his words overplayed by Madonna, the Ben Affleck and celebs behaving badly: "Religion and Life." "I am against America until this life ends, until the Day of Judgment. I am against America even if the stone liquefies. My hatred of America, if part of it was contained in the universe, it would collapse. She is the root of all evils and wickedness on Earth." Saudi Crown Prince Abdallah spoke, four days before America's National Day of Prayer, convinced, as he said "Zionism is behind everything, "not 100%, but 95% [certain] that the Zionist hands are behind what happened. But I tell you that you can be 100% sure that, Allah willing, Saudi Arabia will be victorious, whoever the faction that turns against it may be."

CNN host Wolf Blitzer asked Saudi spokesman Adel Al-Jubeir if he would apologize for the Prince leaving the impression Zionists were blamed for the most recent attack, Al-Jubeir answered: "Why apology? I was explaining it to you. There's no apology necessary."

In the Nazi generation, swastikas went ignored as did Yellow stars and Jew beating. While outside the embassy, think about Saudis promoting kafiyahs and green sashes as mainstream fashion. Focus on "shehada," the Moslem confession of faith that inspired my brother's murder, "for the sake of Allah, martyrdom."

"Don't feel so bad, my friend." my brother wrote in one of his editorials, "I think we are in this bloody mess because many of the politicos making life and death decisions for this country have forgotten that terror is just a five-minute ride home, from anywhere."

Let no one dissuade you, ever, from the journey that brought you, fighting apathy here, today, to this synagogue in the political capitol of the world. The warmth you feel under this rotunda, within these four walls is historic. 6th and I survived the civil war, the turn of the century, transitioning from a synagogue, to a church and, just a few months ago, back again to a synagogue. Its gold Magen David was placed back on top of this house of worsip, rededicated, on Yom Hashoah, a memorial day established to honor the handful of Jews who stood up against the Philistines of WWII, the Nazis. From the ashes of that day, Israel was born. From those same ashes was born their great grandchild, my brother, only to be murdered two generations after Hitler's fall by the descendants of his conspirator, Muslim leader, Husseini, fanning the fires of Islamic hadith, tradition that continues to threaten the lives of my nieces and nephews.

Muslim scholar Sheikh Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi determined a fatwas, religious ruling, making it permissible for more of my family's neighboring bomb murderers to target my brother's "forces of occupation,": 18 month old mirror image of his dad Tzvi, my kallah maiden Chanah, my bar mitzvah in the fall Yitzchak, my huggy buggy Shoshanah, Eliezer the bandit, wide eyed Esther and Yaakov Moshe. Tantawi defines"forces of occupation" as Israeli men, women and children. The fact that my brother is Canadian, my sister-in-law American is irrelevant to him. Just don't lose sight of the fact when Ali Jaara climbed aboard Bus 19 to murder, he did not ask for a culture count of Jews, Israelis, Christians or Arabs. He murdered commuters from 7 communities and 6 countries.

Pass that reality forward when you talk with politicians. If they tell you they have been to Israel, ask the tough question- so how did you travel around the country- by public bus, by cab, or with a driver. Point made, tell them terrorism is no joke. 9-11 was the wakeup call America slept through. In honor of 7 little children who celebrated Father's Day graveside, in Jerusalem, on Har Hamenuhot, please tell people you meet, the big message in America is being delivered by a bombed shell of a little Israeli bus, eleven Jews were murdered on in Israel, January 29th.

If you would, bow your heads, Join me in a short prayer, albeit Islamic: "Oh Allah, accept our martyrs in the highest heavens: Oh Allah show the Jews a black day; Oh Allah, annihilate the Jews and their supporters; Oh Allah, raise the flag of the jihad across the land; Oh Allah forgive our sins."

Between you and me? "God help us."