More on the Mumbai Massacre

Gabi and Rivki Holtzberg, Lubavitcher newlyweds from
Brooklyn, went to Mumbai on an assignment from Chabad.  In this week’s
New York magazine, Jesse Green has a beautifully-written portrait of the couple and their work (“God’s Work”), which ended with their deaths in the massacre by the self-styled “Army of the Pure” from Pakistan:

They are each other’s first date. Gabi is not as handsome as Rivki is pretty, but Chabad valorizes the nerd. The boy who in secular society would be the outcast—the most studious, least athletic, shyest around girls—is here the star. It’s he who is asked to go furthest into the world to represent Jewish values. Gabi immediately explains to Rivki the crazy kind of life he is seeking as an emissary. He says, “I want to tell you I’m a special meshuggener. What I need to do, I will do. Are you ready to do?” And she says, “I’m the same way,” as if relieved.

Their memory is a blessing, and the article is worth reading in its entirety.  It also includes a detailed description of the Mumbai Massacre, which concludes as follows:

At 9:30, the two men assigned to attack the Chabad House arrive at the gate with their Kalashnikovs, pistols, hand grenades, and bombs. The guard, mysteriously, is gone. A taxi, waiting to take the rabbis to the airport after dinner, speeds away as the shooting begins. . . .

In transcripts of intercepted phone calls, handlers back in
Lahore instruct one of the terrorists to kill the hostages in order to “spoil relations” between
India and
Israel. “Brother, you have to fight,” they say, as if he were wavering. “This is a matter of the prestige of Islam.” . . .

Instant messenger, Facebook, cell phones: The technology that made the Holtzbergs’ life in Mumbai less lonely also helped to explain its end. It is largely because Ismail Khan made the mistake of leaving his satellite phone in the dinghy that we know what we do about the terrorists’ movements; Khan and eight of the others were killed in the fighting.

The sole survivor, Muhammad Ajmal Kasab, went on trial last month in Mumbai. His interrogation suggests that the attacks were part of a far broader scheme, some of which fizzled. . . .

The “far broader scheme” was reportedly an attempt to precipitate a massive Indian attack on
Pakistan — one that would have devastated the Pakistani military and led to an al Qaeda takeover of a weakened (but nuclear-armed) country.

 Gabi and Rivki Holtzberg, with a bride and groom in Mumbai.  May their memory be a blessing.