“Come and join us!” he shouted. “We need you. Help us bring these remains to a Jewish burial!”
It was July 6, 1989, and I was essentially still a kid, having just broken into journalism as a stringer for a long-defunct frum weekly. Those were the days before cell phones, but at 18, I was thrilled to have a beeper for urgent messages, a tool of status for a young guy like me. As I was sitting with my editor, eagerly awaiting my next assignment, the beeper suddenly went off. It was from the police spokesman in Jerusalem: “Initial report — a bus carrying passengers has fallen into a ravine near Telshe Stone.”
The next message a few minutes later: Multiple casualties, many injured and apparently, many dead.
Moments later, a third message, this time from a friend who was a volunteer in Magen David Adom and Hatzolah. He was setting out for the scene of the accident, and asked if I wanted to join him. Why not? I was never one to turn down action.
A few minutes later, speeding down the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway with dozens of other emergency vehicles, we heard the latest updates: This was no accident, but a planned terrorist attack. As Egged bus number 405 was making its ascent to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, as it passed Telshe Stone, a terrorist attacked the driver, seized the steering wheel of the bus and forced it over the guard rail down a steep precipice into a ravine. The vehicle tumbled down the mountainside to the bottom of the muddy ravine and caught fire. Some of the passengers were burned alive.
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