Doctor, daughter slain in bombing

By Ramit Plushnick-Masti, Associated Press, 9/11/2003

JERUSALEM -- On the eve of his daughter's wedding, Dr. David Applebaum sat with the young woman late into the evening at a coffee house, offering fatherly advice on marriage before her big day.

Applebaum and his 20-year-old daughter, Nava, were among seven people killed by a suicide bomber Tuesday evening at Cafe Hillel. The attack in Jerusalem's upscale German Colony neighborhood occurred barely five hours after another suicide bomber killed eight people in central Israel.

The 51-year-old Applebaum, who moved to Israel from Cleveland two decades ago, was head of a Jerusalem hospital emergency room and had directed treatment for numerous bombing victims. The US consulate said that both he and his daughter were US citizens.

Applebaum had just flown back to Israel after giving a talk at a New York University terrorism symposium marking the second anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Hours after landing in Israel, the father of six met Nava to impart some last-minute advice before her wedding, which was to have taken place yesterday evening. Instead, the father and daughter were buried at midday, their graves 18 inches apart in a Jerusalem cemetery.

As ambulances began delivering the wounded, the director of Jerusalem's Shaarei Tzedek Hospital, Yonatan Halevy, was wary because there was no sign of Applebaum, usually the first to report to the hospital after a bombing.

"It was clear to me from very early on that David Applebaum -- when he didn't show up, and I knew he was in Jerusalem, and he hadn't called -- that a terrible tragedy had occurred," Halevy said. "Confirmation of my suspicions came shortly."

Word that he was one of the victims came from a rescue worker who recognized him at the scene. The hospital staff had to cope with their own grief as they treated the wounded.

For Nava's wedding, Applebaum -- a rabbi and religious scholar as well as a doctor -- had prepared a book with sayings from family members and himself, biblical passages, and marital advice. "The fact that a man flies, three days before his daughter's wedding, to share this doctrine about preparing for a mass terror attack, which Jerusalem hospitals have unprecedented knowledge of, is an example of his combined outlook: complete dedication, to both work and the family," Halevy said.