Israel Matzav

Fogel memorial service in New York

Earlier today, I embedded a webcast of a memorial service for the members of the Fogel family who were massacred in Itamar last Friday night. Here's an article about the service itself.

Approximately one thousand people attended the memorial in the full sanctuary of the Orthodox synagogue, organizers said, and at least two thousand more followed the proceedings on line. The memorial was sponsored by numerous Jewish American organizations including Hadassah, Hillel, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and others.

Many in the audience were brought to tears in a collective expression of mourning and, at points, anger.

Conference of Presidents Executive Vice Chairman Malcolm Hoenlein said in his remarks that in part, he had organized the memorial out of his own profound sense of sadness twinned with indignation at the barbarity of the crime and the inadequacy of the world’s response to it.

“The Fogel family were brutally murdered by the hands of barbaric, inhuman terrorists who planned and plotted this vile and evil act,” Hoenlein said. “Those responsible demonstrate the level of depravity that can only be compared to the worst of the Nazi horrors. This was an attack on the Fogel family and their community, but also on the state of Israel and the Jewish people.”

“Of what were these innocents guilty?” Hoenlein rhetorically asked in front of pictures of the slain family members. Answering his own question, he responded, “They were Jews celebrating Shabbat.”

Hoenlein decried the international response to the murders, saying, “When the media shifts the focus from the perpetrator to the victim…when they denigrate the murdered to justify the murderer…when they ignore and just put a small notice in the middle pages, then what price is there? Where is the outrage? Where is the indignation?”

His outrage continued even into his introduction of Israeli Ambassador to the UN Meron Reuben, as Hoenlein stated, “Nowhere is the hypocrisy to which the Jewish people are subjected more visible than at the UN, where Israel is condemned and those who murder ruthlessly are forgiven and forgotten.”

For those who missed the webcast (including me - I was in synagogue), I am trying to find out how to access it online. If anyone knows, please drop a comment or email.

Read the whole thing.

Labels: Fogel family massacre, Itamar, Palestinian terrorism

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:49 PM