A suicide bomb in a Haifa restaurant

Citation

Levinson, J. (2004), "A suicide bomb in a Haifa restaurant", Disaster Prevention and Management, Vol. 13 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/dpm.2004.07313aae.008

A suicide bomb in a Haifa restaurant

A suicide bomb in a Haifa restaurant

At about 2.15 p.m. on Saturday, 4 October 2003, Hanadi Jaradat entered Maxim's, a popular Haifa restaurant. She then blew herself up. The explosives, ball bearings and shrapnel killed 19 other persons and injured dozens. Bullets exploded, initially causing security forces to think there might have been a shooting incident in addition to the suicide bombing. There was relatively complete coverage of the bombing in the following day's press due to the early afternoon hour of the incident; the number of articles, however, was limited since the story had to vie for space with the Yom Kippur holiday Sunday evening.

Most newspapers carried some description of families searching for the missing in the three hospitals that received the injured.

The Jerusalem Post carried a front page AP picture of a wounded child being carried out of the restaurant. The newspaper reported that walking wounded at the scene had trouble leaving the restaurant due to overturned tables, bodies of dead and wounded, and the "gore and food" making the floor slick. A p.3 picture carried the caption, "Police and forensics experts inspect the damage …" No further information was given in any of the articles. The picture showed one person with a vest labeled "Property Tax" (Ministry of the Treasury) and several policemen. For the reader's information, in Israel all government non-medical forensic experts are employed by the police. Most of the coverage in the paper dealt with political aspects of the bombing, the mixed Arab-Jewish ownership of the restaurant, and preliminary information about victims.

HaModia, a newspaper put out by the religious Agudath Israel party, covered basic facts of the bombing and information about victims. The newspaper also claimed that after the Sabbath the Tel Aviv unit of ZAKA, the disaster response volunteer organization, assisted the National Center for Forensic Medicine with the registration and identification of bodies. (A senior official of the National Center denied that ZAKA rendered any assistance in the facility.) Other volunteers reportedly distributed food and drink to families at the National Center and in Haifa hospitals. (The same official explained that Ezer MiTziyon, another volunteer organization, routinely provides food and drink when large numbers of bereaved families come to the National Center.)

The ultra-religious Yated did not publish a newspaper due to the Yom Kippur holiday. In its edition of Tuesday, 7 October 2003, there was no mention of disaster management issues.

The English-language edition of Ha'aretz carried the same front page AP picture as the Post. Ha'aretz reported pushing and shooting in a hospital information office as relatives tried to determine the fate of family members. The paper also ran a short article describing the first minutes of television coverage when footage was still not edited. Most telling was the picture of a woman holding a girl in her arms and wandering aimlessly until assistance arrived. Another televised image was a girl standing in front of the bombed out restaurant, until police walked her away. The International Herald Tribune distributed with Ha'aretzí was from Friday, the day before the bombing; hence, there was no coverage.

Yedi'ot Aharonot devoted extensive space to the victims. The newspaper ran one story according to which a father recognized his son's car on television; that is how he first learned that his murdered son had been in the restaurant at the time of the bombing.

Ma'ariv also stressed victims, giving names, pictures, and biographies. Of primary interest was one photograph of the interior of the restaurant, which showed the conditions under which disaster responders had to work.

Jay Levinson