Foreign Ministry honors staffers killed in terrorist attacks

Ceremony held to honor 16 employees who died representing the nation.

By TOVAH LAZAROFF
Lieberman Foreign Ministry memorial 311 (photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski )
Lieberman Foreign Ministry memorial 311
(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski )
Under a blue plastic tent on Sunday, with 16 torches burning behind her, Nily Luria Avnet recalled the heroic life of her uncle Efraim Elrom.
A Polish immigrant, he was kidnapped in May 1971 while serving as Israel’s ambassador to Turkey, she said.
His body was dumped a short distance from his home in Istanbul.
Luria Avnet spoke during a ceremony held by the Foreign Ministry to honor 16 employees killed in terrorist attacks going back to 1970, when two Palestinian gunmen broke into the Israeli Consulate in Asuncion, Paraguay, and killed a secretary, Enda Peer.
Luria Avnet said that from the moment that her uncle failed to show up for work, there was serious concern that something had happened to him.
Thanks to Sunday’s ceremony, his name is immortalized in the annals of Zionist and Jewish history, she said.
“These were the best sons and daughters, whose lives were cut short by base murderers while on duty as emissaries of the State of Israel,” Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said of those who were killed.
To the mournful song of a choir, relatives of the slain Foreign Ministry employees placed torches in iron holders attacked to a stone wall.
Those honored on Sunday were killed in the following attacks around the globe and in Jerusalem:
• 1970 – Edna Peer, killed by a terrorist in Asuncion, Paraguay.
• 1971 – Ambassador Efraim Elrom, kidnapped and murdered by a Turkish underground group in Ankara.
• 1972 – Attaché Ami Shehori was killed in London by a letter bomb sent to him by the Palestinian terrorist group Black September.
• 1975 – Consulate security officer Giora Raviv was killed in Johannesburg.
• 1986 – Ety Tal-Or, the wife of an Israeli consulate employee, was killed when the car she rode in was attacked near the Israel pavilion at the Cairo Trade Fair.
• 1992 – Embassy security chief Ehud Sadan was killed by a bomb attached to his car in Ankara.
• 1992 – David Ben-Raphael, Eli Ben-Zeev and Elior Carmon were among 28 people who were killed when a bomb destroyed the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires
• 1995 – Shira Troper-Arnon was kidnapped and killed while working at the embassy in Lagos, Nigeria.
• 1996 – Aviv Cohen was killed in Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic.
• 1999 – Sorek Gefen was killed in Amman.
• 2000 – Azi Elazar Brosh was killed in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.
• 2002 – Orit Ozervo was killed by a Hamas suicide bomber in Cafe Moment in Jerusalem.
• 2002 – David Diego Ladowsky was killed in a suicide bomb attack at the Hebrew University’s Mount Scopus campus in Jerusalem.
•2003 – Former ambassador to Britain Shlomo Argov died, 21 years afterthree members of Abu Nidal’s organization shot him in the head inLondon.