Yuval Tsemach was visiting clubs across Tel Aviv, trying to find work as a bartender on April 30, 2003, but was not having much luck. As an observant Jew who keeps Shabbat, finding work was no easy task.
Tired from wandering the city and aware that his favorite guitarist, Yanai Weiss, was performing, Tsemach stopped by Mike’s Place, an American chain bar and restaurant known for its open mic nights, sports screenings, and English-speaking staff.
Tsemach told The Jerusalem Post he could clearly remember sipping on his half pint, listening to the music, and inquiring about whether they were hiring a bartender for week nights.
“There was wonderful music, and then something happened,” he shared. “Something that you can explain can’t be explained to someone who hasn’t experienced it. And the closest way to compare this is to… There are times in the movies when the screen becomes black, and there is silence, and you are in shock… There was a blow that I heard behind my back. It was loud, and everything went dark.”
Unknown to Tsemach at the time, but the blow he heard was the sound of 22-year-old British citizen Asif Muhammad Hanif setting off explosives in a suicide bombing. Hanif had entered the country alongside fellow British national, 27-year-old Omar Khan Sharif, through Jordan weeks prior, staying in the West Bank and Gaza before entering Israeli territory hours before the attack.
A second duller boom: The failure of the second suicide belt
“It was loud, and everything went dark,” Tsemach recalled. “This is first, because when you come from light to darkness, you become blind for the [first] few seconds, and it’s a bit of a shock. If you are not expecting to experience this situation… When you’re listening to music, it is the great opposite. And then I think [it took] a few seconds to understand where I am. I was talking to myself and saying, ‘What is this? A terrorist attack?’”
Hamas and Fatah’s Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed joint responsibility for the attack, which killed Ran Baron, a 24-year-old comedian and jazz musician, Dominique Caroline Hass, a 29-year-old French olah working to open her own catering business, and 46-year-old guitarist Weiss, and wounded more than 50 others.
Starting to come to his senses, but still in shock, Tsemach began walking towards the exit as dust continued to fall and cloud his vision. Standing in the dark, only two meters away from the exit and five from the stage with the outlines of bodies surrounding him, he heard a second blast and saw a brief flash of light.
“I remember that it was dark,” he said. “And I think I saw people lying on the floor. I didn’t look at them, but I remember. This is the vision. And while I’m taking myself out [of the building], I heard another blast, which was lower, with a flash of light, with a blast simultaneously on my right side.”
That second, duller boom was later understood to be the sound of Sharif’s second bomb failing to explode. After failing in the attack, Sharif fled, and his body was discovered weeks later, on May 12, on the beachfront.
After escaping the building, Tsemach crossed the street and just stared at the wreckage, emergency workers, and ambulances taking off from the scene. “It was like seeing the movie from another side. Like you are on television, but you see it in front of you, something that you can’t explain, actually. And I was just standing and watching, and I called my parents and my girlfriend, and I reported that what you see on television now is my reality,” he continued.
In a state of shock, it took a while before Tsemach noticed someone talking to him about his shirt. Removing it, he found the white top stained red with a lump of flesh hanging from it, a piece he believes to have been part of the suicide bomber.
After the most severely wounded were evacuated to the hospital, Tsemach was convinced to ride in the last ambulance leaving for Wolfson Medical Center. “Someone told me: ‘Listen, you look in shock, and you see the blood. And we can never know what was in the material of the bomb, maybe it’s a biological weapon or something,’” he explained.
Despite his proximity to the attacker, the doctors didn’t find severe injuries. Tsemach’s eyelashes were shortened by the heat of the explosion, and he had light burns to his eyes.
At the time, Tsemach was invited to speak to the media about the attack, but he told the Post that all he wanted to do was go home and pray.
He was later asked to provide his testimony to both the Israel Police and Scotland Yard.
“When I reached the point [in my testimony] of the second blast, the police stopped me, and he told me, ‘Yuval, you’ve been in the army. I want to describe the level of the sound of that blast, was it close to a grenade, to a pistol, or to an M-16?’ And I told him, ‘I think it’s the lowest level. It’s kind of a pistol,’ he recounted.
Scotland Yard initially wanted Tsemach to travel to London to testify against the families of the terrorists, he said, adding that a deal was reached before his arrival.
Despite the trauma, Tsemach still visits Mike’s Place, considering it a “holy place.” He took his now-wife there on their first date, but only attended the first memorial hosted there.
Comparing what he went through to the story of Avraham, he said he thought an angel protected him that day and shared that the attack fell on the anniversary of when his family members were murdered in the Holocaust. The grandson of a Palmach fighter who fled Germany alone at 14, on the last boat, Tsemach is convinced that his family members who didn’t make it out of Europe protected him that day.
“When my life was saved, the message from above was, ‘No, we want you here. You have to do something. We still need you,’” he shared. “And I have now three kids, and I have something to do.”