A recent event at the Jewish Agency for Israel (JAFI) offices in Jerusalem marked the implementation of a government resolution adopted in 2023 to officially recognize Diaspora Jews murdered in antisemitic attacks as part of the Yom Hazikaron (Israel’s Memorial Day) ceremonies and commemorations.
Hosted by JAFI, the World Zionist Federation and the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, four families—the first of more than 270—received certificates, in which the State of Israel officially recognized the loss of their loved ones as being motivated by antisemitism.
The families included the widow and children of Eliot Fine, who was murdered in Cardiff on September 19, 1981; the widow and best friend of Dr. Joseph Wybran, gunned down in a Brussels hospital parking lot on Oct. 3, 1989; the brother and son of Dr. Sarah Halimi, brutally murdered in her Paris apartment by a deranged Arab neighbor on April 4, 2017; and the widow of Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, killed with two of his sons, Arie, 6, and Gabriel, 3, in a horrific attack in Toulouse in 2012.
Diaspora and Combating Antisemitism Minister Amichai Chikli, who was instrumental in getting the legislation drafted and advanced in the Knesset, acknowledged that this would be the first event of many following the government’s decision to recognize Jews murdered in antisemitic attacks abroad as victims of hostile acts.
“This recognition means national commemoration, the establishment of a dedicated memorial at Mount Herzl and a site that will include the names and stories of the victims,” he said. “It is an act of true kindness and an expression of mutual responsibility between the State of Israel and every Jew, wherever they may be.”
Doron Almog, chairman of JAFI, said that “today, we are making a reparation for those Jews killed in antisemitic attacks outside of Israel.” He added that, especially in these fraught times, there was an urgent need to strengthen the bonds between Jews in Israel and in the Diaspora, something he hoped the Jewish Agency would be instrumental in facilitating.
“We want more Jews to make aliyah, a million more. We need them to come,” he declared.
Almog noted that seven of his family members—including his younger brother, Eran, who died on the battlefield in the Yom Kippur War in 1973—had been killed in Israel’s wars, adding that he well understood the pain of “an empty chair at the Shabbat table, or to look at the pictures on the wall.”
“I want those gathered here to broadcast a message to family members, whether it’s through prayer or giving charity or visiting the country or deciding to make aliyah: We need to strengthen the connection,” he urged.
“Four or five years ago,” said World Zionist Organization chairman Yaakov Hagoel, “I was approached by a woman who had made aliyah from Argentina about 10 years previously. Her mother was killed in the AMIA bombing in Buenos Aires in 1994. Every year in Argentina, there was a ceremony where they remembered her name and those of the other victims. However, in Israel, there was no recollection of her name, and on Yom Hazikaron especially, it made this woman feel sad and a little disconnected.”
“Israel is the home of every Jew,” Hagoel added, “wherever they are— whether they live here, will live here, or never have any intention to come here.”
Chikli, Almog and Hagoel presented certificates to representatives of the four families.
The families of Dr. Wybran and Sarah Halimi were highly critical of the judicial system in their respective countries—Belgium and France— effectively saying (and borne out by the evidence of the leniency shown to their family member’s killers) that it is getting increasingly difficult— if not impossible—for Jews to achieve justice, especially when it is radical Islamists who carry out the attacks.
Halimi’s brother, William Attal, said the Muslim community is very large and politically powerful and exerts an enormous amount of pressure on lawmakers and judges. He floated the idea of trying Sarah’s killer, who is still free, in absentia in Israel. He highlighted that a witness who recorded it all and has the audio of some of Sarah’s last moments, heard the killer talking about Abu Mazen (PA leader Mahmoud Abbas) and the Palestinians on at least six separate occasions.
Jacques Heller, a lifelong friend of Dr. Joseph Wybran and also a Holocaust survivor, said he was shot at point-blank range in the parking lot of the Erasmus University Medical Center where he worked. Heller, who was involved in securing Belgium’s Jewish community, knew many law-enforcement officers. However, despite this, within a few hours, the police had cleaned the crime scene and had barely scratched the surface of an investigation.
The killer, who was part of the Abu Nidal Organization, was caught only because he turned himself in to Moroccan authorities—and even then, it took 20 years. And now he’s free, walking around with a Belgian passport, Heller said.
It was an important event, and despite the passage of more than four decades in the case of Eliot Fine, one that the families greatly appreciated. Haim Fine, one of Eliot’s sons, who had gone ahead of his father on the way to the synagogue on the day he was murdered, said that although the family had been invited to Remembrance Day ceremonies for decades, this recognition made it feel more personalized.
A committee that deals with finding families of victims of antisemitic attacks outside Israel said it was aware of numerous other cases, and in the future, certificates would be presented at diplomatic missions around the world to family members who do not live in Israel.