David Wilder
www.hebron.com
05 April '11
The second day of Nisan marks the tenth anniversary of the murder of ten-month old Shalhevet Pass, shot and killed by an Arab sniper from the Abu Sneneh hills in Hebron. That horrible event remains embedded in my memory, as if it were yesterday. I'll never forget my nine year old daughter, running, screaming, into my office, crying, "the baby was hit in the head and Yitzhak in the legs!"
The following is an interview with Yitzhak Pass, videoed in Hebrew, yesterday. (See video below.)
Q. Yitzhak Pass, yesterday you marked a decade to that terrible day – I remember it like it was yesterday – what about you?
Me too, I remember what happened in detail, even though, after the murder, I had a black hole in my memory, what happened. Afterwards, we started to join our memories, and I remember.
Q. What do you remember?
We walked with Shalhevet in her stroller in the direction of
the Avraham Avinu neighborhood, her grandparents, my wife’s parents, and when we reached the entrance to the neighborhood, then, I remember the blast I felt in my legs, at the first moment I didn’t understand what had happened, and when I turned around and saw that my legs were hit, I realized that I’d been shot. I lay down on the ground behind the soldier’s station, my wife took Shalhevet from the stroller in the direction of a wall that could block them from the shooting, and when she held her head, she discovered that Shalhevet had been shot in the head. The soldiers started arriving, there was shooting, until I was evacuated. I remember it like it was yesterday.
Q. You live about 50 meters from the location of the murder. How do you deal with it, on a daily basis?
Unfortunately, bereavement, both mine and in a more general national sense, is an integral part of our lives. It’s impossible to ignore it and we have to deal with it. I chose to deal with it by living where it happened, to show that it won’t break us, to the contrary, it heightens our determination and increases our strength. There’s no doubt that every time I walk past the monument put up in Shalhevet’s memory, I feel a little pinch at my heart, it’s constant, it’s opposite my eyes all the time, it’s impossible to ignore it, but we learned to live with it, and somehow to receive strength from it.
Q. This wasn’t the first time your families, from both sides, were affected by terror. This was the most horrific, as per the results, but it wasn’t the first time. What other terror events were your families affected by?
Unfortunately, we have a not so simple history in our family, on my side and on my wife’s side. She’s lived here many years; her parents arrived here many years ago. Her father, Avraham Zerbiv, a scribe, some 17 or eighteen years ago, was walking to early morning prayers at Ma’arat HaMachpela when, on the way, he was attacked by three terrorists with axes. He was very critically wounded, he succeeded in killing one of them and the other two were apprehended. His life was saved due to the care he received from Dr. Baruch Goldstein, who performed emergency surgery on him at the site of the attack and saved his life.
My wife’s twin sister was stabbed here in Hebron and fortunately, not seriously hurt. And my younger brother, who today also lives in Hebron, was shot two weeks before Shalhevet’s terrible murder, on the Shabbat of Purim, he was shot by a sniper from the Abu Sneneh hills, and fortunately for all of us, was slightly injured in his foot.
Indeed, we have experienced first-hand, terror and Arab hatred of Jews who live in Hebron.
Q. How did you choose to eternalize Shalhevet?
First of all, from our standpoint, and from that of the entire community, it was a murder that stood out due to its result. This was an infant, ten months old, that shocked the entire world. We received thousands of reactions, letters, not only from Jews and people living in Israel, who shared our grief. We understood that Shalhevet wasn’t our private possession, rather, essentially, someone who belonged to all Am Yisrael – the Jewish people. One of our first decisions was to write a Torah in her memory. This way, anyone who felt a part of this could be a partner, and many Jews helped us from all over the world, and thank G-d, that Torah, which her grandfather, my wife’s father wrote, is here in Hebron.
Afterwards, in consultation with others in the community, we decided to open a Torah study hall, to eternalize her name, called Shahevet Techiyat HaAretz (Shalhevet, the living land), It was important to us to show that her murder just intensified our determination to be a part of our land, and that we are willing even to die for its sake, and to raise up and awaken, to instill love for Eretz Yisrael, the importance of our connection to the land, to settle it, to live anywhere and everywhere in our land.
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