Haim Smadar

Over at My Shrapnel, Gila's brought my attention to something that, no offense Gila, I could have avoided having my attention brought to--the fact that there's now a documentary about a 2002 suicide bombing in Jerusalem. This is the one that motivated Newsweek to run a picture of the bomber and one of her victims side by side, since they were both West Semite girls in their late teens with long dark hair, and it was somehow supposed to 'mean' something, or at least tug at your heartstrings.

Anyway, now we've got this.

Gila does a pretty good job slicing and dicing the Director's Statement, so I'll leave it be. But this caught my attention, since there were actually two victims of Ayat al-Akhras' March 29, 2002 attack, and the one who goes unprofiled in this movie happens to be a personal hero.

Over the years, name after name, terror attacks start to run together. But now and then, one stranger, one face, one detail stands out and remains with you, and for me that was Haim Smadar, the 55-year old security guard at the supermarket that day. He was born in Tunis, the same year as my father, and was the father of six. During the school year he worked as a security guard at a school, but was working shifts at the grocery store to make a little holiday money during the Pesach break.

We'll never know how many lives he saved by intercepting the bomber as she moved toward her target. Witnesses say that his last words to al-Akhras, as he stopped her from entering the store were "You are not coming in here. You and I will blow up out here."

He'd always told his wife he would never allow a terrorist to get into his school, that he would stop an attack with his own body. He was not kidding.

Just an ordinary, everyday hero.