This Passover marks ten years since the deadly terror attack at Park
Hotel in Netanya. On Erev Pesach in 2002, as hundreds of people were
celebrating the Passover Seder in the hotel dining room, a Hamas
suicide bomber entered and blew himself up.
30 people were killed in the attack, the deadliest one in the Second
Intifada, also known as the Oslo War, which broke out in 2000. 140
people were injured.
Ten years after the massacre, over a hundred victims and their
families returned to the Netanya hotel for a memorial gathering and
therapy session, within the framework of their ongoing treatment and
care of the OneFamily organization.
At the memorial service, attended by Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger, the
OneFamily Bereaved Fathers Choir sang verses from the Book of Psalms,
Yair Hamami, whose father and manager of the Park Hotel Amiram was
killed in the attack, recited the Kaddish prayer, and relatives of
the victims lit memorial candles for their loved ones.
Dalia Falistian, whose parents were killed in the attack, said during
the memorial, “I’m not broken. I’m strong. I don’t want anyone in
Israel and in the whole world to forget the Park Hotel.”
“Returning to the Park Hotel is an integral part of the healing and
rehabilitation of the victims, offering them the opportunity to
remember and display their resilience in the face of such tragedy,”
said OneFamily founder and chairman Marc Belzberg. “At OneFamily, we
will continue to support the victims into the next decade, for as
long as they need us.”
Belzberg told Arutz Sheva, “All victims are one family. All the
Jewish people are one family, and that is the magic that heals.”
Over the last ten years, OneFamily has affected the rehabilitation of
thousands of Israel’s 17,000 victims of terror; facilitating their
healing and reintegration into society by providing material and
rehabilitative support to anyone who has been bereaved, injured
and/or recognized as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
The recipients of the 2011 Presidential Citation for Volunteerism,
OneFamily uniquely provides a tailor-made blend of financial
assistance, therapeutic programs, legal assistance, personal
encouragement and moral support.
The Jerusalem-based organization, which is led by founders Chantal
and Marc Belzberg, grew from their then-12-year-old daughter’s
initiative to donate her bat mitzvah gifts to benefit the victims of
the 2001 Sbarro suicide bombing attack.
