[Reader-list] Israel buries victims, vows revenge

[Aditya Raj Kaul]

Israel buries victims, vows revenge

*Jerusalem: Amid heart-rending scenes, thousands of tearful Israeli mourners
dressed in black and chanting hymns today bid an emotional farewell to the
six Jews who were killed in the deadly Mumbai terror strikes.
*
Twenty nine-year-old Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivka, who ran a
centre for ultra-orthodox Chabad-Lubavitch movement in the Nariman House,
were among those killed when terrorists stormed the Jewish complex.

An Israel Air Force plane brought the bodies here last night, along with the
couple's two-year-old orphaned son Moshe.

President Shimon Peres, Defence Minister Ehud Barak and opposition leader
Benjamin Netanyahu joined about 10,000 people who crowded outside the sect's
headquarters in Kfar Chabad near Tel Aviv. Indian ambassador to Israel
Navtej Sarna and members of the Indian community were present to share the
grief.

Ultra-orthodox Jewish men, bearded and in long black coats and black hats,
also packed the Mea Shearim neighbourhood in Jerusalem for the funeral of
38-year-old Leibish Teitelbaum, a US citizen who lived in Jerusalem.

Notices in billboards and walls read "May God Avenge Them." Wailing mourners
recited prayers from Book of Psalms.

Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, a Chabad official from New York, delivered a moving
eulogy for the young Rabbi and his wife and said "We will answer the
terrorists." He pledged to rebuild the Mumbai centre and name it after the
Holtzbergs.

Emotions ran high as the Rabbi described Moshe, who was rescued by his
Indian nanny from the clutches of terrorists, as the "child of Israel."
Israeli TV stations had been repeatedly playing Moshe's heart-rending cries
for his mother at a memorial ceremony in Mumbai.

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