World Bnei Akiva MovementCenter for Religious Affairs in the Diaspora
The Online Hadracha Center
מרכז ההדרכה המקוון

Noam Apter in Yeshivat Otniel

Event Details :

Ivri Date: 23 Tevet, 2002

English Date: 28 December, 5763

Additional Details: On erev Shabbat, Dec. 27, 2002, more than 100 Israeli teenagers and young adults sat down for the Shabbat meal at the yeshiva of Otniel. These are people who study in yeshiva before and sometimes during their army service. Four of the students whose turn it was to be the evening's waiters went into the kitchen adjoining the dining room to serve the main course. They were Noam Apter, 23; Yehuda Bamberger, 20; Zvi Ziman 18; and Gabriel Hoter, 17. Outside the kitchen, two terrorists, members of the Islamic Jihad organization, were wearing IDF army uniforms and toting M 16's, ammunition, and hand grenades. The two terrorists burst into the kitchen and sprayed the four waiters with fire from their M-16s. Hit by the bullets and mortally wounded, Noam managed to run to the door connecting the kitchen and the dining room and close it from the kitchen side. He locked the door and threw the key into a dark corner. He then collapsed and died, lying against the door. The terrorists tried to open the door. Seeing it locked, they tried to spray fire through a small glass window into the dining room. After realizing that this fire was inaccurate and wild (it only wounded six more students) and having already murdered the four student waiters, the terrorists fled the kitchen, later to be hunted down and killed by the Israeli army. According to 18-year-old Yaacov Ohana, a wounded survivor of the attack who was quoted in the Israeli daily Ma'ariv, "Our great luck was that Noam succeeded in locking the door to the dining room and throwing the key into a dark corner, otherwise the terrorists would have massacred dozens."

Noam Apter in Yeshivat Otniel