This article was written 36 years after the massacre and is found at http://en.hebron.org.il/news/463
Hope and Community Triumph 36 Years after the Murder of “The Six”
Six young men were murdered in a terrorist ambush in 1980. Today, six families are raising their children in a building dedicated in their memory.
On May 2, 1980 (after sunset =17 Iyar 5740), six young men were murdered in an ambush attack outside the historic Beit Hadassah building in Hebron’s old city. The attack also injured over a dozen people. But the story begins long before that.
The construction of Beit Hadassah took place in 1893 at the initiative of Rabbi Haim Rahamim Yosef Franco, chief rabbi of Hebron. It served as the country’s first Hadassah hospital, now the world renown Hadassah Medical Center headquartered in Jerusalem.
It was in this building that a group of women and children camped out in an effort to reestablish a normal Jewish community in Hebron. They lived there for a year as groups of supporters of the new inhabitants encouraged them.
One of these regular shows of support happened on that fateful day of May 2, 1980 when a group of young men gathered outside Beit Hadassah for the traditional Friday night Shabbat prayers.
David Wilder, longtime spokesperson for the Jewish Community of Hebron described it as such:
“On Friday nights, following Shabbat prayers at the Tomb of Machpela, the worshipers, including students from the Kiryat Arba Nir Yeshiva, would walk to Beit Hadassah to sing and dance in front of the building, recite Kiddush, and then return to nearby Kiryat Arba. In early May of 1980, a year after the women first arrived at Beit Hadassah, the group was attacked by terrorists stationed on the roof of a building across the street.
Shooting and throwing hand grenades, the terrorists killed six men and wounded over a dozen. Later that week the Israeli government finally issued official authorization for the renewal of a Jewish community in Hebron.”
Comment: Strengthening or Adding New Jewish Settlements is an additional tool to punish terrorists.
If Netanyahu tried this tactic at this point in time I believe it would weaken both the Israeli left and the American left.
It would provide an alternative to the demands of the left to surrender to Hamas because we have to “do something” to save the hostages.
