March 1, 1994: Gunman targets Jewish students on Brooklyn Bridge

NEW YORK CITY, USA – Sometimes terrorism is a game of oneupmanship.

If you will recall, a few days ago I featured the massacre at a mosque in Hebron, Palestine by a Jewish extremist from Brooklyn. Baruch Goldstein killed 29 Muslims at prayer before he too was killed by those who survived his rampage.

Not surprisingly, events of this nature engender a lot of suffering and grief. Families need to bury their dead and put their lives back together. If those killed were the primary breadwinners there is financial hardship as well.

All too often, these attacks also lead to demands for revenge. It is a human trait to exact a price for violence: it seems the Christian adage of ‘turn the other cheek’ is the less frequent response.

Today’s featured attack has a direct link to the Hebron atrocity.

On this day in 1994

A gunman in a car opened fire on a van carrying more than a dozen Hasidic students as it began to cross the Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan, critically wounding two young men and injuring two others. One victim died and another suffered permanent brain damage.

There was panic all through the van. People were screaming and praying. One guy was yelling, ‘It’s the Arabs.’ Everyone was saying the Sh’ma,

Survivor of the attack

The shooter was Lebanese-born individual named Rashid Baz. At first classified as a simple shooting, it was labeled an act of terrorism 11 years later. Baz got life in prison for his act despite the defence’s claim that he had suffered PTSD during the Lebanese civil war and from the Hebron attack.

More lives taken and irrevocably changed. And for what?

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