This is an excerpt from a speech Sharon gave to the Knesset after the Seder massacre in Netanya. It was a different year, a different Pesach and most of all, a different Sharon.
"Our dead lie in a long row: women and children, young and old. And we stand facing them, facing the vacuum created by their murders, and we are speechless. On the recent evening of the seder, while I was sitting with my family at the table, I received the terrible news of the massacre in Netanya. There is no more dreadful moment in the term of a prime minister, than that horrendous moment when the telephone rings, or a note is passed during a meeting, and carrying Job's tidings.
And then the sights and sounds come rushing in, the sights of destruction, the cries of the wounded, the sirens. Then the awful silence of the funerals, the faces and human stories which stare at us from the newspapers: the face of Rachel Koren, whose husband and two children were buried on the same day, side by side; a short distance from her, the face of Karmit Ron, forever separated from her husband, 21-year-old daughter, and 17-year-old son; the face of Adi Shiran who was buried while both her parents are unconscious, fighting for their lives in the hospital;
It is not a coincidence, members of Knesset. It is not cruel fate. The murderous gangs have a leader, a purpose, and a directing hand. They have one mission: to chase us out of here, from everywhere - from our home in Elon Moreh and from the supermarket in Jerusalem, from the cafe in Tel Aviv and from the restaurant in Haifa, from the synagogue in Netzarim - where the murderers slaughtered two over 70 worshipers, walking in their prayer shawls to morning prayers - and from the Seder table in Netanya."
"Our dead lie in a long row: women and children, young and old. And we stand facing them, facing the vacuum created by their murders, and we are speechless. On the recent evening of the seder, while I was sitting with my family at the table, I received the terrible news of the massacre in Netanya. There is no more dreadful moment in the term of a prime minister, than that horrendous moment when the telephone rings, or a note is passed during a meeting, and carrying Job's tidings.
And then the sights and sounds come rushing in, the sights of destruction, the cries of the wounded, the sirens. Then the awful silence of the funerals, the faces and human stories which stare at us from the newspapers: the face of Rachel Koren, whose husband and two children were buried on the same day, side by side; a short distance from her, the face of Karmit Ron, forever separated from her husband, 21-year-old daughter, and 17-year-old son; the face of Adi Shiran who was buried while both her parents are unconscious, fighting for their lives in the hospital;
It is not a coincidence, members of Knesset. It is not cruel fate. The murderous gangs have a leader, a purpose, and a directing hand. They have one mission: to chase us out of here, from everywhere - from our home in Elon Moreh and from the supermarket in Jerusalem, from the cafe in Tel Aviv and from the restaurant in Haifa, from the synagogue in Netzarim - where the murderers slaughtered two over 70 worshipers, walking in their prayer shawls to morning prayers - and from the Seder table in Netanya."
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