Cigarette Smuggler Linked to Halberstam Murder
For 18 years an anti-Semitic livery driver has been doing time for shooting up a van full of Yeshiva students on the Brooklyn Bridge — and killing Ari Halberstam. Now cops have nabbed his “Palestinian uncle.”
Muaffaq Askar has long been suspected of supplying convicted killer Rashid Baz with the murder weapons, sources said.
But in announcing Askar’s arrest for allegedly being part of a multi-state cigarette smuggling ring with possible terrorist ties, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly referred to him simply as a “confidant” of Baz.
At the same time, the NYPD dispatched detectives to the Crown Heights, Brooklyn, home of Halberstam’s parents.
It wasn’t immediately clear what they discussed with Halberstam’s kin. But for Ari’s mother, Devorah, word that Baz was in cahoots with people like Askar is not likely to be a revelation.
Her son’s death was reclassified a terrorist attack by the FBI years ago.
In an op-ed piece Devorah Halberstam wrote for the Daily News last month — on the 19th anniversary of her son’s murder — her continued heartache was evident as she pleaded for increased gun control.
“I hope that Ari’s memory can help move Congress and leaders across the nation,” she wrote. “I’m not asking for a perfect solution; I’m asking only for a solution that will save lives.”
Ari was a favorite of the [Lubavitcher] Rebbe, [Rabbi] Menachem Schneerson, whose wife treated him like the grandson she never had.
Small and bespectacled, Ari was jokingly called “Mighty Muscles” by his buddies. But he was no slouch on the basketball court and baseball diamond. And he impressed Schneerson by taking his religion seriously.
On March 1, 1994, Ari and some friends were returning home to Crown Heights from the Manhattan hospital where [the Rebbe] had been treated for cataracts.
Baz was tailing them in a blue Chevrolet Caprice.
And at 10:24 a.m., Baz opened fire.
An Israeli immigrant would tell cops later he heard somebody yell, “Kill all the Jews.”
But for Ari and the others, the first inkling of trouble came when bullets sliced through the side of the targeted white Dodge van.
One round hit Ari in the head.
Mortally wounded, Ari was rushed back to Manhattan where heartbroken Hasidim prayed for his recovery long after the doctors at St. Vincent’s Medical Center declared him brain dead.
Then-mayor Rudy Giuliani called the attack on Ari “an attack on all New Yorkers.”
But after Baz was arrested, his lawyers insisted the tragedy was born of road rage — not the ongoing struggles between the Israelis and Palestinians.
They claimed Baz was traumatized while growing up during the Lebanese civil war and was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder when he fired on the van.
Baz was convicted in 1995 and sentenced to 141 years in prison.
Years later, it was revealed that Baz’ attack on the boys was payback for the massacre of Palestinians in Hebron by a deranged Jewish settler from Brooklyn.
In memory of Ari, the City Council in 1995 formally renamed the ramp from the FDR Drive to eastbound lanes of Brooklyn Bridge the “Ari Halberstam Memorial Ramp.”
Goldstein Was Not Deranged
Far from being “deranged,” Boruch Goldstein died on kiddush Hashem to prevent another massacre of Jews in Chevron that he overheard the Arabs were planning.
moshe
cool photo!
I can't believe it
During WW2, my fathers first wife was taken by the Nazis, and used in their brothels. When they came to get her, my father couldn’t protect her because ‘guns’ were outlawed. In Poland, and Germany, and everywhere else, by their governments, and were taken away, confiscated. Therefore Jews could not protect themselves or their loved ones.
ANYONE that thinks that guns in America should be outlawed, is an ignorant idiot..
Try being informed instead of opinionated.
Milhouse
Losing her son does not give her an excuse for trying to deprive everyone of the means of defending themselves and their children. How many other people have to lose their sons and daughters or their own lives, to make her happy?
To #4
GD Bless people that THINK like you!!!
NRA vs. Obama
The NRA (National Rifle Association), is NOT against background checks. What it IS against, is the government’s just ‘acquiring’ info on potential criminals or established criminals, and DOING NOTHING ABOUT IT OR THEM!!! That is what they’re against.
This is NOT JUST a problem for Americans, but also affects American Yidden!!!
PLEASE JOIN THE NRA!!!
Please join the NRA. Educate yourselves.
Obey, and follow the gun laws in the State you live in.
This is a privilege living in America.
Take your wife and your children to a shooting range. Join a class. Get an instructor.
Take some responsibility for the welfare of your family. You might just save a life.
Grow up. We are still in Golus.
“Those that do not learn from history, are destined to repeat it”!!!
Milhouse
The NRA is actually a very moderate organisation, wide open to compromise. The fact that it is portrayed as “extremist” just shows how corrupt and full of falsehood the anti-gun lobby is, and why the anti-gun lobby can’t be trusted with even “reasonable” regulations. Give them a finger and they’ll take a hand. No compromise is enough for them, they will not stop until everyone is disarmed, and criminals have a free hand to attack whomever they like. All of the “research” that they finance is unreliable, all their statistics are suspect, they’ve been caught many times committing open fraud.
Milhouse
PS if you feel strongly about gun rights, and you want to join an “extremist” group that will stand strong and uncompromising in defense of liberty, forget the NRA, look at Gun Owners of America, or Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership. They are the real “extremists”, while the NRA is moderate.
Hashem should comfort her...
>Hashem should comfort her..
>Moshiach should come already so she will be united with her son M.H….
I just hope it’s in THIS world, not the next.
Get a CCL mom.
And stop ruining it for others with your peh.