r/HistorySnap

On this day in history, October 4, 2003, Palestinian Islamic Jihad carried out a suicide bombing at the Maxim restaurant in Haifa, Israel, murdering 21 people and wounding dozens.

It was Saturday lunchtime. Families had gathered to eat at a seaside restaurant jointly owned by Jews and Christian Arabs, where Jewish and Arab Israelis regularly worked and ate together. Hanadi Jaradat, a female Palestinian lawyer, a suicide bomber from Jenin, detonated an explosive belt among the diners.

The bomb was packed with metal fragments to make it more deadly. The explosion sent shrapnel through the crowded restaurant, destroying its interior and killing children, parents, grandparents and staff.

Two families each lost five members across three generations.

The Zer-Aviv family lost Bruria, her son Bezalel, his wife Keren, and their children: four-year-old Liran and one-year-old Noya. A grandmother, both parents and both children were murdered in the same attack.

The Almog family lost Ze'ev and Ruth, their son Moshe, and their grandchildren: nine-year-old Tomer and eleven-year-old Assaf Staier.

Ten-year-old Oran Almog survived, but the blast left him blind. His father, brother, grandparents and cousin were dead. He lost his sight and five members of his family in one afternoon.

Four Arab employees were also murdered. The terrorists attacked a place where coexistence was part of everyday life, and killed the people who made it possible.

In 2012, the Arab Lawyers Union awarded Jaradat its highest decoration and sent a delegation to present it to her family. A union representative said its lawyers were proud of her actions. The woman responsible for murdering children at lunch was being honored for it.

Maxim was rebuilt and reopened. A memorial near the restaurant remembers those murdered there.

Wiki

On this day in history, October 2, 1938: Arab attackers massacred 19 Jews in Tiberias, including 11 children, during the Arab revolt in British Mandatory Palestine.

The attack began around 9 p.m. Telephone lines were cut and roads were blocked. Armed attackers struck government buildings and entered the Jewish Kiryat Shmuel neighborhood, breaking into homes, murdering families and setting buildings on fire. Around 70 attackers took part. Only 15 Jewish guards were defending a neighborhood of roughly 2,000 residents. The approach facing the Sea of Galilee had been left unguarded because an attack from that direction was considered unlikely.

Rachel Mizrachi, 26, was murdered with her five children: Ezra, 12; Miriam, 5; Yochebed, 3; Samuel, 2; and Hephzibah, just one year old. Their father, Shimon, was on guard duty elsewhere in the city when his family was killed.

In another home, Joshua Ben-Arieh, his wife Shoshanah and their son Arieh were reported stabbed and burned to death. Their other son, Moshe, just a year and a half old, was shot dead. Three children from the Leimer family, aged 12, 10 and 8, were also reported stabbed and burned to death in that house.

The synagogue was set ablaze. Its elderly caretaker was stabbed to death, killed beside the Torah scroll. Two Jewish guards who came to help were ambushed and killed.

Alex Morrison, who arrived shortly after the massacre, described seeing the bodies of babies still burning. His account also described naked female bodies bearing evidence of horrific knife violence.

The British government's report to the League of Nations described the massacre as "systematically organized and savagely executed." It stated that 15 of the 19 Jewish victims had been stabbed to death.

The Haganah subsequently investigated the failures in the city's defenses. Later that month, Tiberias's Jewish mayor, Zaki Alhadif, was also assassinated.

Entire families were destroyed in their homes. Eleven children never grew up. This happened in 1938, a decade before the State of Israel was even established.