Israelis, Arabs Alike Suffer in Bombings

Moshe Rahamim was stocking toys and children’s shoes in the Mahane Yehuda market stall he inherited from his father when his world erupted in a riot of smoke, fire and shrapnel.

Two explosions flung him backward into a shaking corridor, and when he recovered his footing, he plunged into the smoky mayhem of broken bodies and bloodied watermelons to help the wounded.

“I ran to them and I saw one [victim] going up in flames. I ripped the clothes off his body,” Rahamim said, his trembling hands covered with soot and blood.

“I saw dead people, a person with no legs, one with no arms. I’ve seen many things in the market, but something like this in Mahane Yehuda, never before.”

The suicide bombers who ignited about 40 pounds of explosives in the teeming souk Wednesday struck at the heart of Jerusalem and at an old-world institution where Arabs and Jews, mutually dependent and suspicious, work cheek by jowl over mounds of native produce.

The blast took victims from all sectors of Israeli society--religious and secular, Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews, Russian immigrants and Palestinian citizens of Israel.

“The people who did this are bastards,” Farid Abed, a Palestinian market employee said in Shaare Zedek Hospital, where he was treated for smoke inhalation. “They don’t care if they hurt Arabs or Jews. They are like stones.”

Back in the market alleys, fear turned to anger amid the carnage. A barely concealed hatred burst into the open as Israeli youths shouted, “Death to the Arabs. We want revenge.” Around them, witnesses wandered dazed and glassy-eyed as families rushed at police lines, screaming to be let in to search for missing relatives.

The central market is run mainly by Sephardim, or Middle Eastern Jews like 44-year-old Rahamim, whose father emigrated to Israel from Iraq and raised a family by selling fruit, toys and shoes.

“I was born in the market, I live in the market, I was married in the market and now my children are growing up in the market,” Rahamim said. “Understand, my world is the market and my grave will be in the market. No one can change this, not Hamas, not [Palestinian Authority President] Yasser Arafat.”

Shops in the market are family businesses. One of the bombs exploded outside the Nissim family’s shoe store. Tzion Nissim’s mother, father, son, nephew and cousin were wounded. Another cousin, David Nasko, died.

“David, poor David,” another cousin, Shoshi Sharabi, cried at Shaare Zedek Hospital. “He has two small children. . . . What is his sin? Why did he have to die like this?”

The market also is home to many ultra-Orthodox Jewish families, who watched the press of ambulances, soldiers and panicked relatives from their laundry-draped balconies.

The market has been the site of nearly a dozen bombings and other attacks in the past 30 years, none as sophisticated as the one Wednesday by synchronized suicide bombers in dark business suits. The place is a political stronghold of the right wing, a cakewalk for Likud Party politicians at election time.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won handily there during last year’s national vote, although on Wednesday, constituents of the man they call Bibi had as few kind words for Israeli politicians as for Arab enemies.

“Netanyahu is stupid,” said Shimon Eliyahu, who has sold sweets in the market for 30 years. “He gives in too much to them.”

“Nobody can control this terrorism, not Bibi, not [slain Prime Minister Yitzhak] Rabin, not Clinton,” added Uzi Benjamin, 30, from his stall. “This shows you can’t trust the Arabs. If you give back all of Jerusalem, they will kill us anyway.”

Not everyone succumbed to the rage, however. Emerging from her fogged shock in a hospital bed, Orly Ohayon recalled the blast and struggled to give it meaning.

“I heard an incredible loud noise, an explosion . . . and saw layers of dust and sand and stone coming toward me like in a movie. . . . And then we were running toward the exit,” she said as her husband, an anti-terrorist police officer, held her hand.

“My views are normally quite to the left,” she said, pausing to search for words. “I believe in peace and that one can get to peace. It is easy to say ‘I hate, I hate’ right now. I cannot say exactly how I feel, but I want to express hope that there should be peace.”

Ramit Plushnick of The Times’ Jerusalem Bureau contributed to this report.