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| By: Associated Press |
| Published: April 25, 2006 |
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A 16-year-old American tourist is still fighting for his life in an Israeli hospital a week after a Tel Aviv suicide bombing that killed nine people, and thousands are using an author's e-mail list to pray for his recovery.
The teenager, Daniel Wultz, came to Israel with his parents, Tuly and Sheryl, to visit relatives on Passover. They live in Weston, Florida, north of Miami.
On April 17, father and son were eating lunch in downtown Tel Aviv when a Palestinian suicide bomber ignited 4.5 kilograms (10 pounds) of explosives at the entrance of "The Mayor's Felafel" restaurant.
The bomb, laced with nails and other projectiles, wrecked the restaurant, shattered car windshields and smashed windows of nearby buildings. Glass shards and blood splattered the ground. Six Israelis, two Romanian workers and a French tourist were killed and dozens wounded.
Critically injured, Daniel was taken to nearby Ichilov Hospital. Doctors removed his spleen, a kidney, and part of a leg. A week later, his condition remains critical, hospital officials said.
His father suffered less severe injuries. Though he has not yet been released from Ichilov, a hospital spokesman said he is out of danger.
Sheryl Wultz was not with her husband and son when the bomber struck.
The Wultzes, who have declined to speak to the media, asked their friends and their congregation to pray for their son. On Monday, the David Posnack Hebrew Day School in Plantation, Florida, where 10th-grader Daniel has been a student since elementary school, held a special prayer service for him.
Rachel Keller, the director of Judaic studies at the school, said, "Daniel is a most remarkable young man. He is a person of great moral convictions and has been a wonderful asset to our school." She described the Wultz family as "quite religious" and the school as a close-knit community.
In addition to praying for Daniel, the Chabad Lubavitch of Weston, which is the family's religious community, has set up a special fund in his name.
The family's request for prayers also went out over the Internet, where it soon reached author Naomi Ragen, whose best-selling novels include "The Covenant," a tale of ordinary Israelis whose lives are changed by terrorism.
"I got an e-mail from a woman in Dearborn, Michigan," Ragen said, "who forwarded to me a letter she had received from a friend of hers. The message gave Daniel's name and his age and asked that people pray for him." Ragen, who lives in Jerusalem, forwarded the letter to the thousands of readers on her e-mail digest.
Ragen said she doesn't know the Wultz family but felt a bond with them. She was caught in a bloody terror attack with her own family four years ago - the bombing of the Park Hotel in the Israeli coastal city of Netanya. That suicide bombing, at the start of Passover in 2002, killed 29 Israelis.
"I was there with my two sons and my daughter-in-law," Ragen said, "and just the idea that something could have happened to them ... no one can understand that. To be totally helpless to protect them. There's a special type of horror when you're involved in a terror attack with your child. My heart goes out to these people."
Since sharing Daniel's tragedy with her e-mail digest, Ragen has received hundreds of messages from people eager to help. There are e-mails from Jewish and Christian groups, from America, Australia, and Africa, "from every corner of the world." According to the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, more than 200 American citizens have been killed or injured in terrorist attacks in Israel since 1992. |
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