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Rachel Levy

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The entrance to the Kiryat HaYovel supermarket, where Akhras detonated the bomb and killed 2.

Rachel Levy (Template:Lang-he) was killed at age 17 on March 29, 2002 in the Kiryat HaYovel supermarket bombing in Jerusalem when Ayat al-Akhras, a teenage Palestinian female suicide bomber, wearing a belt of explosives around her waist, blew herself up at the entrance to a supermarket in Jerusalem's Kiryat Hayovel neighborhood on March 29, 2002.[1]

Early life

Rachel Levy grew up in the United States from the age of six months until the age of nine. She majored in photography at the Sieff High School in the Beit HaKerem neighborhood in southwest Jerusalem. A month before Rachel was killed, her cousin, Rafi Levy, was shot dead near Ofra in a terrorist shooting attack.[2]

Bombing

In the afternoon of 29 March 2002, Ayat al-Akhras, an 18-year-old female Palestinian suicide bomber approached the Kiryat Yovel supermarket in Jerusalem. The supermarket at the time was full of dozens of customers who were shopping their groceries for the weekend, and Levy had gone to buy things for the Shabbat meals. Akhras told two Arab women to leave before she detonated. Haim Smadar, the 55-year-old security guard who guarded the entrance to the supermarket and spoke Arabic, witnessed this and became suspicious. Smadar prevented Akhras from entering the market, who then detonated the explosives at the entrance to the store. Smadar, Akhras, and Rachel Levy were all killed in the explosion, while another 28 civilians were injured.[3][4]

International attention

The killings gained widespread international attention due to the suicide bomber's age and gender and the fact that one of the two Israeli dead was a girl of nearly identical age as the bomber, who herself had a coincidentally similar "twin-like" appearance to the bomber. The killings led U.S. President George W. Bush to observe: “When an 18-year-old Palestinian girl is induced to blow herself up and in the process kills a 17-year-old Israeli girl, the future itself is dying, the future of the Palestinian people and the future of the Israeli people.”[5]

Documentary

Rachel Levy and Ayat al-Akhras in the film To Die in Jerusalem

The 2007 HBO documentary To Die in Jerusalem is about the efforts of Rachel's mother Avigail Levy to meet with Um Samir al-Akhras, the mother of Ayat al-Akhras. "To Die in Jerusalem" won HBO Documentary Films, in association with Priddy Brothers, a Peabody Award in 2007.[6]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Israel Under Attack-Jerusalem-Kiryat Yovel". Israeli Prime Minister's Office. 2002-03-29. Retrieved 2007-09-04.
  2. ^ Rachel Levy
  3. ^ "Female suicide bomber kills 2 at capital supermarket". Info.jpost.com. 2002-03-31. Retrieved 2012-10-29.
  4. ^ Schoolgirl suicide bomber kills two in supermarket
  5. ^ Joshua Hammer. How Two Lives Met In Death. NEWSWEEK April 15, 2002
  6. ^ "List of 2007 Peabody Award winners". USA Today. 2008-04-02.

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