Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the Chabad House in Mumbai on Thursday and unveiled a memorial to 166 people who were murdered by Muslim terrorists who rampaged through the Indian city in a three-day siege in 2008.
Netanyahu was accompanied by Moshe Holtzberg, a boy whose parents were among six people murdered at the Chabad Center during the terror attack.
Netanyahu said light would spread from the memorial to make the world a better place and addressed Holtzberg directly.
“The Jewish People have been with you throughout and there is a good reason for this. What happened here expressed many things. It expressed hatred of Israel and love of Israel. Your dear parents’ love of Israel, that of the Chabad emissaries here and around the world, which embraces every Jew and has a home for every Jew everywhere including here in the heart of Mumbai,” Netanyahu said at the inauguration ceremony.
“Love of Israel and hatred of Israel – the reprehensible murderers who, we regret, claimed their victims, did not claim this boy because of love of Israel, of a splendid woman, Sandra,” he added in reference to Holtzberg’s nanny, Sandra Samuel, also present, who saved Moshe who was two years old at the time of the attack.
“This place symbolizes both hatred for Israel and love for Israel—hatred of Israel by the terrorists, against tireless love for Israel by the Chabadniks who spread light around the world,” Netanyahu continued.
Sandra Samuel found Moshe by his parents’ bodies. She left for Israel after the attack and returned to India for the first time on Tuesday.
Turning to Samuel, Netanyahu asked her to stand as she received a rapturous round of applause from those in attendance.
“We have Sandra here who also symbolizes love for Israel inherent in people,” Netanyahu said. “We know that with the force of life and our love of life, we have overcome all obstacles and the Jewish People lives. The Jewish People will continue to prosper thanks to the strength of their faith, their love and their actions which find expression in this house and in the house that Moshe will establish, with the help of G-d. I would like to thank you all for your magnificent spirit; to the grandparents—well done. Am Yisrael Chai!”
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