JERUSALEM – The target of yesterday’s bombing was a university student center that had become an oasis of tolerance where Jewish and Arab students could mingle and ignore the past 22 months of bloodshed.
“There’s no guns in here, no policemen in here, just young people 19 to 25 years old eating their dinner,” said student Alastair Goldrein, 19.
“Everyone was happy together. It was the most popular cafeteria on campus.”
Hebrew University, which opened in 1925 on Mount Scopus, where it is surrounded on three sides by Palestinian neighborhoods, has an international academic reputation and offers courses in English and Hebrew that draw students from around the world.
Goldrein, from Liverpool, England, is one of the 1,500 foreign students who attend classes with 4,600 Arabs. The university has a total enrollment of 23,000 full-time students.
The university stresses co-existence so much that for years the Israeli flag was not flown on campus but just at its entrance.
“It is a real shame. These students – Jews and Arabs, as well as others, mixing together – were trying to learn and define their lives,” said Amanda Green, 20, of Brazil.
The student center was built by Americans – many of them Californians working in the entertainment industry, who had it named after Frank Sinatra, one of the donors.
Yesterday, the building was packed with students registering for classes for the upcoming school year or taking a break from summer classes.
More than 100 students were in the cafeteria at 1:30 p.m. Jerusalem time when the bomb, left under a lunch table, detonated – turning the room into a battle zone of bloody bodies, shattered glass, smashed tables and chairs and scattered food trays and schoolbooks.