During his maiden visit to Israel, Prime Minister Narendra Modi met the Israeli child survivor of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. Moshe Holtzberg was just a two-year-old kid when terrorists from the Lashkar-e-Taliban terrorist organization attacked Nariman House, one of the five targets of the terrorists. The attack claimed the lives of 166 people including Moshe’s parents, Rivka and Gavriel Holtzberg. Prime Minister Narendra Modi also met Sandra Samuels, Moshe’s nanny, who managed to escape with him from the Nariman House.
Prime Minister Modi also met Moshe’s grandparents, both paternal and maternal, and invited Moshe to India along with his family, for which they will be provided with a long-term visa. Modi had also invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to India and Netanyahu surprised the 11-year old kid by inviting Moshe to join along with the Prime Minister.
It was an emotional moment to meet young Moshe, his maternal & paternal grandparents and Ms Sandra Solomon, his nanny. pic.twitter.com/jI93JBSDp1
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) July 5, 2017
When Modi met Moshe, the kid expressed his love for Modi and the Indian people. Modi tweeted later that day that it was an emotional moment when he met Moshe and his family. Moshe’s parents had come to Mumbai as emissaries to Chabad in Mumbai when Chabad House was attacked by terrorists. The nanny Sandra now works with young kids in Jerusalem and joins the Holtzberg family for weekends at their home in Afula, Israel, where Moshe goes to a Yeshiva. Sandra had been honored with an honorary citizenship of Israel in September 2010.
Rivka and Gavriel ran the Chabad House in Mumbai and Gavriel was a religious leader and community leader for the local Jewish Indians. He was an Israeli-American Orthodox rabbi and the couple’s first son died of Tay-Sachs disease at the age of 3 and second son died at the age of 4 of the same disease. Moshe was the third child of the couple and was born healthy. At their funeral, it was revealed by Rivka’s father that she was five months pregnant with another child when she was slain.
