Attack Sparked 20 Year Friendship

By COLlive reporter
Photos: Shimi Kutner/COLlive

Friends and supporters of the Jewish Children’s Museum in Crown Heights celebrated the institution’s positive impact during the 12th anniversary dinner Thursday night.

Seated in an elegant tent set up on Kingston Avenue to accommodate a crowd of 300, Devorah Halberstam reminded guests of her custom to keep an empty seat at her Seder table on Pesach each year.

The seat is saved for her first-born son Ari Halberstam who was murdered in a terrorist attack on the Brooklyn Bridge in 1994.

One of the reporters sent to the scene of the attack at the time was Emmy winning investigative reporter and news anchor Mary Murphy. That date is etched in her memory, despite covering many other events since.

“March 1st, 1994 is forever etched into my memory as a journalist and as a human being,” Murphy told the audience at the dinner of the museum, describing how her 20 year friendship with Devorah Halberstam got started.

“We’ve all seen the images over the years of the white van. I remember the quiet chaos in the emergency room in St. Vincent’s hospital on 7th Avenue in Manhattan. I recall the flood of shell-shocked mothers and fathers showing up in the lobby.”

Murphy emotionally described what she had only heard about, but tried to imagine: the image of 16-year-old Ari lying next to his schoolmate, Nachum Sassonkin, side by side in a single room, both of them on life support, after the shooting.

Murphy had been covering terrorism and attempted terror attacks in New York City since the 1980’s, such as the February 26, 1993 truck bombing in the World Trade Center parking garage or the shooting on the Observation Deck of the Empire State Building by a Palestinian teacher in February of 1997.

“Road rage never made any sense on the Brooklyn Bridge,” Murphy said. “The attack was part of a pattern of targeting American Jews, American aviation and American landmarks.”

It made sense that the attack was retaliation for the slaying of 29 Arabs by a Jewish settler in Hebron. “The kind of weaponry that Rashid Baz was stashing spoke to a bigger event than a simple road rage incident,” she said.

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In this pre- September 11th climate, Murphy says, she met Devorah Halberstam. “Ari had a ‘Lev Tahor’ – a pure heart, and I believe it pushed his mother to stop at nothing to set the historical record straight on what happened to her firstborn son,” Murphy said.

Throughout the years, Murphy says, Halberstam kept in touch with her as she followed the rise of terrorism in the United States. Halberstam was part of a team that worked to craft Ari’s Law, which requires gun owners to obtain a license, and she also worked extensively on New York’s first terrorism laws.

Despite the fact that Rashid Baz’s accomplices were never convicted for their part in Ari’s murder, “Devorah has made sure, in beautiful ways, that no one forgets the name Ari Halberstam,” Murphy said.

Ari’s name appears on the Brooklyn Bridge signs for the Ari Halberstam memorial ramp, and the Jewish Children’s Museum in Brooklyn, which was built in his memory. In 2000, the FBI labeled Ari’s murder as an act of terrorism.

The Museum was built “to teach children of other faiths and backgrounds about the Jewish traditions that Ari loved so well, and to this day, Devorah wants the museum to stand for a place that promotes respect and understanding,” Murphy said, as she received the Ari Halberstam memorial award.