DIMONA, Israel — Rabbi Yisroel Gellis had just finished hanging a big sign over the new branch of Chabad-Lubavitch of Dimona when 60 meters away, a Palestinian suicide bomber's explosion rocked the Israeli city's downtown shopping center and the relative calm that had descended of late on the country's interior.
Rabbi Sees Miracle in Dimona’s Low Casualty Figure
DIMONA, Israel — Rabbi Yisroel Gellis had just finished hanging a big sign over the new branch of Chabad-Lubavitch of Dimona when 60 meters away, a Palestinian suicide bomber’s explosion rocked the Israeli city’s downtown shopping center and the relative calm that had descended of late on the country’s interior.
Gellis, who directs the Chabad House and its network of educational institutions throughout the Negev desert town, immediately rushed to the site of Monday’s terror attack, which killed one shopper and injured dozens of others. Both Hamas and Fatah’s Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade clamored to claim responsibility for the bombing.
He and an assistant set up a table just past the barrier set up by emergency personnel and offered the growing crowd of shaken men to put on tefillin.
“There was so much pressure,” said Gellis. “They wanted to overcome it.”
It was from their perch that the pair witnessed one of the more miraculous moments in the minutes following the explosion. According to The Jerusalem Post, a nurse was in the process of inserting an IV into the arm of an injured man, only to realize that he was also wearing a belt of explosives. She screamed for help and within seconds, a police superintendent shot and killed the man.
