ASHDOD, Israel – Hundreds of people gathered in the Israeli city of Ashdod on Dec 25 to lay to rest Mr Dan Elkayam, a French Jew killed in the Dec 14
anti-Semitic attack on a Hanukkah celebration
at Bondi Beach in Australia.
“Dan, my Dan-Dan, my son, my love, my life. My heart is in a thousand pieces,” his mother Annie Elkayam said through tears, standing before his body draped in a tallit, the traditional prayer shawl.
“Why did God take you in the prime of your life? You had a thirst for life, to discover and to savour every moment. You are a light that will shine in our hearts forever.”
The 27-year-old computer engineer, originally from Bourget near Paris, had been working in Australia for a year at the time of the Sydney attack, which killed 15 people at a celebration marking the beginning of Hanukkah earlier that month.
A passionate amateur footballer, Mr Elkayam had been selected on multiple occasions to play for France at the Maccabiah Games, an international sporting event for Jewish athletes held every four years.
“Thank you for having guided me all throughout my life, thank you for giving me a love of football, thank you for helping me in difficult moments, thank you for giving me a love of travel,” his brother Roy Elkayam said.
“I will never be able to thank you enough, my brother.”
Mr Yehiel Lasry, the mayor of Ashdod, where Mr Elkayam had family, said that “even those who did not know Dan personally are shaken, crying out to the heavens in the face of such a senseless loss”.
His was “a pure life, brutally snatched away by anti-Semites devoid of any humanity”.
One of the alleged gunmen in the Bondi attack, Sajid Akram, 50, was shot and killed by police.
His 24-year-old son Naveed was
charged with 15 counts of murder
, as well as committing a “terrorist act” and planting a bomb with intent to harm.
Benjamin Netanyahu has accused Australia’s government
of “pouring oil on the fire of anti-Semitism”, namely by moving to formally recognise a Palestinian state.
AFP
Rebecka Roberie
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