For most American Jews, the word Ramallah instantly evokes a horrifying image, with a still more horrifying story.
Who can forget the lynching of two Israel Defense Forces reservists at a police station by an angry mob of Palestinian Arab men. Those men literally ripped apart with their bare hands the two Israelis, and flung the dead men out the window, where still more Arab men dipped their hands into the lifeless bodies, removing internal organs in an orgiastic frenzy normally reserved for starving wild animals. The two Israelis, Vadim Nuhrzitz and Yossi Avrahami, never had a chance against more than 1000 Palestinian Arabs.
The iconic picture of one of those barbarians, Aziz Salha, gleefully holding up his bloody hands at the window, is forever etched in the minds of so many of us.
It has been thirteen years since the Ramallah lynching.
And this week, the son of one of the grotesquely murdered Israelis, has become a bar mitzvah. David Vadim Nurzhitz, the son of Vadim Nurzhitz, celebrated his entry into adulthood according to Jewish law. David never knew his father. The lynching took place shortly before David was born.
So now, let us do our best to replace the memory of the evil Salha – who, incredibly, was released in 2011 in the massive exchange of murderers and other terrorists for the kidnapped Gilad Shalit – with David’s smiling face.
Mazal tov David, may you live a life of joy until the age of 120, and may you go from strength to strength.