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0202 – Points of View from Jerusalem

#0202_A_View_From_West_Jerusalem

“I was involved in the first-response, on-site medical treatment administered to Adiel Kolman HY”D [1], [who was stabbed in] the terrible terror attack that happened two days ago in the Old City. Since then, I’ve been painfully reconstructing his last moments, in which he communicated with me through sign language because of shortness of breath caused by his injury.

Later, I went to the hospital to check up on him and, following his family’s question, asked my teammates in the Old City team if Adiel managed to speak to any of them. They said that he made sure to shake their hands when they reached him, and my teammate, the senior medic, Rabbi Yossi Ben Shahar, who drove the ambulance said ‘Yes! His last word as I loaded the stretcher onto the ambulance was ‘shalom.’’ [2]
This last word of Adiel’s reminded me of the essay written by the author Etgar Keret (I hope that I’m quoting it right): ‘When you’re having an asthma attack, you’re short of breath. When you’re short of breath, you find it difficult to speak. Your sentence is limited by the amount of air you are able to blow out of your lungs. It isn’t much, something between 3 to 6 words. It makes you respect a [single] word. You skim through the piles of words in your mind. You choose the most important.’

As someone who treated Adiel a few moments after he was put on the ambulance, I can say with certainty that pronouncing his last word took immense effort, and still, he insisted on blessing the person in front of him with ‘shalom.’

Adiel’s noble conduct in his last moments testify to the great loss suffered by the People of Israel. For us all, I wish we would all adopt this characteristic of Adiel’s legacy: to show the people around us a smiling face and bless them with ‘shalom.’ May he rest in peace!”

– Jerusalemite FB group

[Selected Comments:]
– “It’s so terrible that these good, kind-hearted people are killed, and everything continues as if nothing happened! Dire losses to the People of Israel and the world is silent.”
– “Knowing how to extract [things like these] from the abyss in which we are in unnecessarily – these small but great things… May he rest and peace, and thank you!”
– “Heartbreaking. Enough!”
– “Very touching. I really identify with the quote you mentioned. I think of it often. In a period in which we don’t take notice of losses, because of their frequency, you did the right thing by giving this its place. Thank you!”

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0202 Editor’s Notes:
[1] ‘Hashem Yinkom Damo’ – May God avenge him. A blessing said about a person killed in an attack.
[2] The word “shalom,” in hebrew, literally means peace and is used idiomatically as a greeting to say either hello or goodbye to another.

For a multiple points of view post about this event, see:
https://goo.gl/cyFBr3

#Stabbing #Old_City #East_Jerusalem

https://goo.gl/pCF7r2

https://www.facebook.com/1675349376080655/posts/2079499855665603