(18:50) Weeping survivors return to scene of pizzaria bombing
By Steve Weizman, The Associated Press
JERUSALEM (AP) – Some crying, others sitting in stony silence, survivors of last month's suicide bombing of a Jerusalem pizza restaurant revisited the scene of the attack today and vowed to get on with their lives.
Making good on its pledge to get back in business as soon as possible, the US-owned Sbarro restaurant held a VIP reopening amid tight security for high-profile guests, including Israeli President Moshe Katsav and US Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer.
Five weeks after the eatery was shattered and scorched by the blast from a bomber who killed himself and 15 diners, the only trace of the tragedy was a memorial lamp near the doorway and a plaque which read, "In memory of the darkness which fell upon us on Thursday August 9, 2001."
Kurtzer thanked the Israeli government and people for their expressions of condolence and support in the wake of yesterday's mass terror attacks in New York and Washington.
He said Sbarro's decision to rebuild and reopen was a fitting tribute to the victims, who included an elementary school teacher from New Jersey, Judith Greenbaum. "We are here today to make a statement," he said. "And that statement is that terror will not win."
Sitting in a corner booth, her eyes red from weeping, bomb survivor Simona Ehrenzweig said that her leg injury caused her less pain than the psychological scars left by her experience. "I'm still being treated by a psychiatrist," she said. "I'm really in a mess, I'm fed up living in a country where there are bombs going off all the time. Maybe now in the United States they'll understand what we go through everyday."
Then, squaring her shoulders, she said that even if such attacks were to continue people should carry on living their lives as usual, as an act of defiance.
Kurtzer, too, made reference to the shared experience of Americans and Israelis.
"Our deep friendship, our deep relationship with Israel will continue as we face this threat together," he said.
Mazal Asraf was visiting Jerusalem from her home in Tel Aviv when the bomb exploded as she was about to enter Sbarro, throwing her into the air and sending her to the hospital with head and back injuries. Her forename means "luck", appropriately perhaps, as she survived a bombing in Tel Aviv's Dizengoff Center in 1996.
Asraf was reluctant to revisit Sbarro for today's reopening.
"I didn't want to come, I kept seeing all the dead and injured like a movie being rerun in my head, " she said.
But like Ehrenzweig she sounded a note of defiance.
"We have to carry on living," she said. "We can't give up, can't let the terrorists see that we're scared, that's what they want."
