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Two victims of the Palestinian terror attack in Jerusalem Wednesday were laid to rest. A third, seriously wounded, is being treated at Shaare Zedek Medical Center.
Ofer Ben Ari, 46, victim of a Palestinian terror attack in Jerusalem early afternoon Wednesday, had noticed two terrorists who began stabbing passersby outside Jaffa Gate, at the entrance to the Old City. He rushed out of his car to try and stop them bare-handed.
“Caught in the crossfire of the Border Police officers, he was killed by a stray bullet,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated. He succumbed to his wounds at Shaare Zedek Medical Center.
Ben Ari owned a recording studio in the capital, and for years would open it free of charge to distressed youth. He also provided temporary housing for the homeless in an underground property that he owned.
Survived by his wife and two daughters, he was buried Thursday in the Har Hamenuchot cemetery in the Givat Shaul neighborhood of Jerusalem. Hundreds attended the funeral.
‘My Father Was a Hero’
“You won’t accompany me at my wedding. You won’t see my children,” a daughter cried during her eulogy. “I can’t believe that I don’t have a father. I am an orphan now.”
“My father was a hero,” she said.
Minister for Environmental Protection Avi Gabbai, a childhood friend of the victim, told the mourners that Ben Ari always cared about others. “The only consolation to the family is that Ofer prevented the terror attack from being bigger than it was, “he said.
Rabbi Reuven Birmacher, a 45-year-old married father of seven from Kiryat Ye’arim, a town in the Jerusalem district, was stabbed by one of the terrorists before Ben Ari arrived at the scene. He, too, died of his wounds at the hospital and was laid to rest in a late-night funeral Wednesday at the Givat Shaul cemetery.
Victim Was ‘Full of Joy and Life’
Born in Buenos Aires to a secular family, Birmajer moved to Israel five years ago after becoming religious, Klor said.
Rabbi Steven Burg, director-general of the Old City’s Aish Hatorah yeshiva, said Birmacher was a “beloved” teacher and “admired greatly by the Spanish branch.”
Birmacher was a man “full of joy and life,” Zvi Klor, director of the Spanish-language program, said.
The terrorists, former prisoners from the Palestinian village of Qalandiya, near Jerusalem, were shot dead at the scene.
By: United with Israel Staff
(With files from Arutz-7)
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