The annual memorial for Yehoshua Sloma was important for young students of the Nir Yeshiva, inspired by his dedication.
Yesterday a special memorial service and tour was held for Yehoshua Sloma, a student of Yeshivat Nir, who was murdered in Hebron in 1980. Current students of the Yeshivat Nir toured Hebron and learned about the young man who made Aliyah from Denmark and volunteered to join the Israel Defense Force.
He was buying fruit for Tu Bishvat when he was targeted by a terrorist sniper and shot. The students and teachers stood at the spot and talked about Yehoshua, a special guy, full of joy and love of country, who divided his time between Torah study and meaningful army service.
Teachers at Yeshivat Nir in nearby Kiryat Arba noted that the murder occurred in what once was a Jewish neighborhood of Hebron until the 1929 Hebron massacre. “We are working to deepen the connection of the people of Israel to Hebron and widen the Jewish presence in the city,” they stated.
Elimelech Karzen, a community administrator in Hebron stated that today, as the 44th anniversary of the murder is commemorated, “thousands of Jews are now currently living in Kiryat Arba and the Jewish community in Hebron, there are thousands of graduates of the Nir Yeshiva and hundreds of thousands of visitors visit the city every year, proving that despite the memorial being vandalized every year, Israel is alive, and the sacrifice of Yehoshua Sloma was not in vain.”
Born Jesper Jehosua Sloma in Denmark, he was a member of the Bnei Akiva youth group.
In 1976 he immigrated to Israel and spent a year training in Kibbutz Lavie in the Galilee. In 1977 he joined the hesder yeshiva in Kiryat Arba, official becoming an immigrant and joined the IDF as part of the hesder program.
SNEAK ATTACK
On the 13th of Shvat 1980 Yehoshua was walking in the casbah (market) of Hebron when he was targeted by a terrorist sniper and shot. He was laid to rest on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem. His friends at the yeshiva set up a memorial for him at the place where he fell, but the monument has been frequently vandalized.
The commander of his unit wrote in a letter of condolence to his family: “We were horrified by the murder of Yehoshua, who came to Israel in order to fulfill his duty to the homeland and was murdered in a criminal manner.”
The nearby community of Beit Haggai was named in his honor as well as two other students who were also murdered in Hebron during the course of the year 1980.
The JTA reported his funeral in Jerusalem was attended by more than 2,000 people. The report noted Yehoshua was unarmed at the time of his attack.
MURDERER ALSO KILLED FELLOW ARABS
The killer was Mohammed Ibrahim Abu Ali from nearby Yatta. Born in 1956, he was active in anti-Israel causes since his youth. He was married with two children and a pregnant wife at the time of the murder. Called by his nom-de-guerre Abu Ali Yatta, he spent 28 years in prison where he rose in the ranks of Fatah and was elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council while still in jail where he still serves today. He was released in a good-will gesture in 2008. Upon his release the Telegraph reported that he “gained additional notoriety for killing a Palestinian whom he believed to be a collaborator with Israel while in prison.” The article went on to describe a “lavish reception” for his release. “Abu Ali’s family, most of whom still live in the village of Yatta near Hebron, is preparing to slaughter seven baby camels, 40 head of sheep and a bull for a party involving the entire southern Palestinian governorate to mark his return.”
KIDNEY DONATION SAVED ARAB CHILD
Yehoshua was treated for bullet wounds but succumbed at Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem. After his passing, a kidney transplant was conducted by Hadassah doctors and one of Yehoshua’s kidneys has given to an Arab girl named Amira Bukassah from an Arab community near Shchem (Nablus).
The Jewish Post, Indianapolis, February, 1980 stated that the other kidney was donated to a Jewish man from Beersheba. Spelling his name Yehoshua Gaspar Sloan, they identified the Arab girl as 12-years-old and noted “despite the fact that she exclaimed bitterly against the Israelis and wore a PLO necklace, her life was saved at Hadassah hospital.”
Member of Knesset Menachem Porush told news media the Arab teen was “known for her enthusiastic support of the PLO.”
The Jewish Observer February, 1980 issue commented on the issue stating “an alert was issued to the other hospitals in the region that two kidneys were available for someone in need-with two responses coming in. The next of kin, Yehoshua’s parents, live in Denmark and apparently were not available for permission. The picture here became touched with bitter irony: a recipient of one of Yehoshua’s kidneys was Amira Abkussah, a devout supporter of PLO terrorist activities. She does not keep her sympathies in the closet, but has been using every opportunity to espouse them with speeches, amulets, and posters on the hospital walls. Only a youngster, true. But in the tinderbox atmosphere of contemporary Israel, a sixteen year old girl calling for the “annihilation of the Jews of Palestine” is an agent provocateur. Thus, the remains of a martyr, who was killed in hatred by an Arab bullet, was violated for the sake of the welfare of a girl who has been preaching and urging acts of the very kind that ended his life. The bitter irony of this case only serves to dramatize the unacceptability of the law as it stands; and the imperative need to change a bad law, and align the procedure in Israel with that of all democracies: that pathologists refrain from tampering with the body of a deceased person when they do not have prior consent from next of kin.”
The book Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land by David Shipler described the incident as follows:
“In 1980, a twelve-year-old Arab girl described as outspokenly anti-Jewish, received a kidney transplanted from the body of a Jewish settler, Jesper Jehosua Sloma, who had been slain in the Arab market of Hebron. The match was coincidental, a function of blood type and timing rather than religion or politics. But it ignited an outcry when a nurse in the dialysis unit of another hospital, Shaare Zedek, complained that the girl, Amira Aabi Bukassah… had made anti-Jewish remarks and had worn a pendant with a sword engraved with the word “Palestine,” a symbol meaning that Palestinians should take over and drove the Jews into the sea. “She spoke all the time against Jews,” Menachem Porush, a Knesset member… “in this case, a boy has been killed by Arabs. To transplant his kidney into an Arab girl who hates Jews, this is too much.” The Knesset later enacted a prohibition against transplants without a relative’s permission.”
He is remembered in the book A New Shoah: The untold story of Israel’s victims of terrorism by Giulio Meotti:
In 1980, a twelve-year-old Arab girl received a kidney transplanted from the body of a Jewish student who was murdered in the Arab market of Hebron. Jesper Jehoshua Sloma had immigrated from Denmark. His family was not very religious, but he became devout in Israel, wore a yarmulke, and combined his service in the army which religious studies in Kiryat Arba. Walking alone through the twisting alley of the Kasbah in Hebron, he was shot twice in the head.
REBUILDING HEBRON
Yehoshua’s murder led to increased pressure on the Israeli government to allow Jewish residents to reclaim property stolen after the 1929 Hebron massacre. The Israeli government allowed historic Jewish-built sites to be reclaimed in aftermath of the attack.
