Volume 5, Issue 6 / Sivan, 5762 / June 2002
Black Seder
By Simon Griver
This Pesach was different from all other Pesachs for Menachem and Esther Bali. Guests at the infamous Seder in the Park Hotel in Netanya in which 28 people were murdered by a suicide bomber, the Angel of Death passed over them but has left them severely shaken and housebound.
Esther, 69, received serious stomach wounds but her life was saved by surgery. She has also lost the use of her left hand due to shrapnel, which entered her wrist. Menachem, 74, was knocked unconscious by the explosion and though receiving no substantial physical injuries from the attack, six weeks after the event he remained deeply traumatized. Luckily, the Bali's daughter, Kochava Dinur, who is principal of the Jewish Agency's Youth Aliyah Kiryat Yearim Youth Village, was not with them on this holiday eve.
The Balis were born in Turkey and came to Israel 50 years ago. They have lived in Yokneam near Haifa, for the past 42 years. Together with the neighboring Megiddo Regional Council, Yokneam is paired with the Atlanta, Georgia and St. Louis, Missouri, Jewish communities in the Jewish Agency's Partnership 2000 program.
Menachem spent his life working in Yokneam's Soltam metals factory and it was during the company's annual vacation for employees in Netanya that the Balis came to love the Mediterranean resort as a kind of second home. Esther is deeply religious, and having undergone cancer surgery, she did not have the energy this year to kosher her kitchen for Pesach, and so the couple made the fateful decision to holiday in Netanya this year at the Park Hotel.
"In fact the cancer surgery saved my life," explained Esther. "Several days after the explosion the surgeon who had performed the operation on my stomach came to me with a huge lump of shrapnel. You know where we found this, he said. It was embedded in your prosthetic breast. It did not pierce the silicon. But if you had had your own breast you would not have been alive today."
Esther does not recollect much about the explosion. "I had had an ominous feeling all day," she recollected. "We had just sat down at the table with all our friends when suddenly there was an explosion. I just remember everything seemed to be on fire. My hair was on fire. Then a burst pipe in the ceiling drenched me with water. I crawled out of the hall and was shoved in an ambulance and taken to Netanya's Laniado Hospital."
Menachem remembers even less. He was knocked unconscious by the blast and when he came to in Kfar Saba's Meir Hospital he could not even recall his own name."
"We were just preparing to welcome guests for our seder in Migdal Ha'Emek," said their daughter Kochava, "when friends phoned to tell us to turn on the TV because there had been an attack at the Park Hotel. For a moment we were frozen with horror. Then we decided the best thing was to travel to the hospital in Netanya."
Kochava and her brother Itzik reached Laniado Hospital to discover that their mother Esther had been rushed into emergency surgery for her stomach wounds. The critical operation lasted for six hours.
Meanwhile, Menachem unable to remember his name, was unaccounted for. "Our father did not appear on the lists at any of the hospitals," said Kochava, "and he was not in the hotel." His children feared the worst.
But about four hours later in the early hours of the morning, Menachem's head began to clear and he remembered his name. For Kochava it was as if he had come back from the dead.
Six weeks later both have been released from hospital but rarely leave the house. Menachem still has dizzy spells and problems with his memory, and is due to have open-heart surgery in a few weeks due to a condition unrelated to the Park Hotel bombing. Esther is virtually bedridden and still has stomach pains and cannot use her left hand at all.
"The local community here has been wonderful," stressed Kochava. "They are treated like family. Every day a different neighbor brings in a cooked meal and friends come to help my father to the synagogue. I don't know how we would have coped without their help. And most difficult of all for them are the emotional scars," she added. "Many of their good friends died that night in the Park Hotel."
Credits: Photos by Douglas Guthrie.
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