 ORT Israel Vows to Heighten Security After Bombing Attempt Thwarted at School |
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(Yokneam, ISRAEL-December 5) According to Zvi Peleg, Director General of ORT Israel, since the
start of the Intifada three years ago, the State of Israel has not faced a terrorist attack the magnitude
of the one planned for the ORT Alon Junior High School in Yokneam. On Wednesday, Israeli officials thwarted a planned attack by two Palestinian Islamic Jihad suicide bombers sent to attack Israeli schoolchildren in the northern Israeli town. Israeli officials said they arrested two Palestinians at a West Bank mosque, one wearing an explosives belt, who were planning to attack the school. The IDF said it was the first time Palestinians are known to have deliberately targeted Israeli children. "Our mission obligates us to maintain the security and spirit of our thousands of students and employees, and we must do everything possible to uphold this mission, especially when the population targeted by these criminals are young boys and girls," stated Peleg after hearing of the foiled attempt. "It is our job to reach out for peace, but at the same time to ensure that many additional families are not injured," he continued. "Today as students in the State of Israel were targeted for murder and attack, we are even more obligated to peace and to maintaining their security." The school's principal, Dr. Rivka Tzafir, noted that her school has a wonderful support system and that a sense of togetherness has pervaded the school. She spent Wednesday evening answering students' questions in an online forum on the school's web site. She emphasized how well the students were coping. There were such a large number of hits that the server had crashed. The day following the incident, attendance at the school was high. "Today, students and teachers spent most of their time talking about what had happened and about their feelings," Tzafir said. "Most felt that, despite their fears, there was nowhere else they would rather be right now than at school." Since the onset of the Intifada in fall of 2000, the ORT Israel family has lost 47 of its students and graduates to terrorism. Many others have been injured. ORT has established a trauma-counseling program encompassing all of its educational establishments and continues to provide security installations to protect its students and staff. The ORT School in Yokneam, with its 950 students, was recently awarded the Education Ministry's prize for initiatives aimed at gender equality. The school is part of the ORT Israel network, which has touched the lives of nearly one in four people in the Israeli workforce, encompassing 156 educational establishments: junior and senior high schools, industrial schools, technology and academic colleges, adult education courses all over Israel. Nearly 100,000 students are educated by ORT Israel every year. |
