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THE ISRAEL PROJECT
Haifa’s Bomb Victim
Surfing To Heaven
Story and Photos by Tim Boxer
 LIAD
MOREH still finds difficulty trying to sleep. Nightmares
consume her with images of youthful bodies shorn of their limbs,
of fellow students screaming in pain as blood gush from openings
in their stomach.
It all started, Eliad told me, when she was
sitting in the Frank Sinatra Cafeteria of the Hebrew
University’s Mount Scopus campus on July 31, 2002.
She was having lunch with a close friend, David
Diego Ladowski, who was about to leave for his first
diplomatic posting at the Israeli Embassy in Peru.
Suddenly a bomb blasted the room, killing
nine people, including David, and injuring 86, among them Eliad.
“I was wounded in the back of my head and
neck,” Eliad said. “My right eardrum was perforated. I still
have traces of metal in my legs.”
It was not a suicide attack. The mass killer
ignited the bomb and fled to save his own life.
“Amazingly,” Eliad said, “he returned
the next day to help in the clean-up of the cafeteria he
destroyed. When the police identified him, they found he was an
Israeli citizen who was employed as a carpenter on the campus. He
belonged to a terrorist cell made up of Israeli Arabs.”
Eliad, who is 29, is engaged to a computer
engineer and works as a research coordinator at the art museum of
Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.
She related her story at a New York reception
aboard the Mariner III at Chelsea Piers for the Israel Project, a
non-profit organization founded by Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi
to educate the public about Israel.
Arye Mekel, Israel’s former UN
deputy ambassador and newly named consul general in New York,
vowed that Israel will not slack in its fight against terrorism.
“Despite the UN,” he said, “Israel will continue to build
its protective fence.”
Mekel introduced the victims of terror, among
them Lea and Yossi Zur of Haifa. Their son Asaf
(“Blondi”) was on a bus returning from the ORT Chana Senesh
School on March 5, 2003, when a suicide bomber struck, killing 16
people.
“Asaf was 17 years old and loved to
surf,” the father said. “His monument is shaped like a surf
board.”
To learn more about Asaf visit www.blondi.co.il,
which is dedicated in his memory.
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