The horror that changed everything:
The attack on the Park Hotel in Netanya took place on March 27, 2002, Seder night.
In the attack, 30 people were killed and injured, 160 and it is considered the most severe attack that occurred in Israel.
Following the attack, the IDF launched Operation Defensive Shield, which aimed to damage the Palestinian terrorist infrastructure and stop the wave of attacks.
That evening, as every year, a seder night was held at the hotel for 250 guests in the dining room, some of them elderly people who could not keep order in their homes.
Shortly after 19:00 in the evening, a suicide bomber entered the hotel unhindered.
He crossed the lobby and reached the dining room.
According to eyewitnesses, he was disguised as a woman and looked suspicious.
When he reached the center of the hall, he detonated the bomb he was carrying on his body.
The powerful explosion caused extensive destruction in the dining room and hotel.
19 people were killed on the spot, and later another 11 died from their wounds. Several married couples, a father and daughter and a Jew from Sweden, who came to stay in Israel for the holiday, were killed in the attack.
11 of those killed were Holocaust survivors.
"There was chaos in the hotel"
Meital Bachar from Netanya, an MDA shift officer who received the first phone call, recalls the inferno. "I was a relatively young shift officer," Bachar recalls. "He was calm and nice and suddenly I got a call, very fragmented.
A woman called, saying: 'Explosion at the Park Hotel'.
I did not think it was a terrorist attack, but I realized it was a big event.
Within seconds a flood of phones arrived and we realized it was a terrorist attack.
We started taking out everything we could.
"It was a holiday eve, so there were a lot of ambulances in the house on standby, and as soon as a message comes out everyone sets off. This is a special message that draws the attention of all MDA workers and volunteers in the country to the event.
I remember conversations saying that there were dozens of people in critical condition.
There was chaos in the hotel.
The whole hotel went up in the air.
Although I was a young officer, I grew up in the center and with a lot of courage we ran the event, me and my partner.
I applied everything I had learned all those years - flowing forces and managing the relationship properly.
60 ambulances came from all over the country and it is difficult to manage 60 ambulances in contact.
Have to be very commanding and make decisions.
Meital Bachar,
"When the first ambulance arrived, they brought him a flood of wounded, they just flew at him. He reported that there were dozens of casualties. I remember Amit, my deputy manager, saying on the radio 'Send me bags of spaces'. We assumed it was four or five, and suddenly he got in touch. And said about 12. Then there was silence, we understood the extent of the casualties. We realized it was madness, and it ended much more. He was missing a lot of sacks.
"This is the event that shaped me as a shift officer. To this day I am on duty. It was a very difficult event, which remains with me to this day. I got home at five in the morning, took a shower and went to bed, and only then did I drop the token and start crying for about an hour and a half."
Korin Ben Aroya, a resident of Netanya, lost her husband Shimon in the attack, and her daughter Sheri became paralyzed.
"We went together, the whole extended family, to Seder night at the hotel," says Ben Aroya.
"It was me, my husband Simon, the children, my parents, my mother-in-law, my brother and his family and two pairs of friends." Towards 19:00 they began to enter the hall.
While we were looking for a place to sit was the explosion.
Some had time to sit down and some were still standing.
Corinne Ben Uriah,
We were all injured in one way or another.
I lost consciousness at that moment.
I regained consciousness only in the trauma room at Hillel Yaffe Hospital in Hadera, about an hour after the attack.
"I did not understand what happened. I was told there was a terrorist attack and I did not understand what it was about me. They started asking me all kinds of questions to see if I was okay. Only the next day I was informed of my husband Shimon. He was killed on the spot. ".
Corinne and Shimon were married for 22 years, until the attack cut off Shimon's life.
"We were married from 1980 until the attack. We had three children. Simon was the king and I was the queen. He was loved by his friends. He was a man who loved justice, honest, loved all people. He was a charming man, who loved to give. He gave without Conditions".
Ben Aroya not only lost her husband in the attack.
Her daughter Sheri, a soldier in the IDF, was seriously injured. "She was then an intelligence officer in the Air Force, who came on holiday.
She was seriously injured and left paralyzed in every part of her right body.
After the attack, she was evacuated to Rambam Hospital.
She was hospitalized there for a month, and then spent two years in rehabilitation at the Levinstein home.
This Seder night has become our whole life. "
"I was saved thanks to my daughter"
Lydia Lanksner, a nurse and director of the emergency department of Laniado Hospital in Netanya, was supposed to be with her family on Seder night at the Park Hotel but canceled. Instead, she was called to treat the wounded. Me, my husband, kids, parents and family who came from Belgium.
This was a period of terrorist attacks, and a week before Seder night there was an attack on the Jeremy Hotel in Netanya.
Two terrorists opened fire on the hotel and two people were killed.
I treated the wounded at the hospital.
I came home that night very tired.
Lydia Lanksner,
"My daughter Shira was 9. She pulled my dress and said, 'Why are you taking us to a hotel? People are being shot at in hotels.' Mine is scared so I can not force her to go. 'I realized she was not the only one who was scared, but she was the only one who said. Instead I decided to cancel. I informed the hotel. We informed everyone that we were doing it at home. On Seder night we all crowded into the house and got up to perform a kiddush. At that moment we heard a loud boom. There was an echo of the explosion all over the city.
"There was a shock at the table. There were cries and shouts and my mother-in-law fainted. I told them: 'Calm down, keep the Haggadah, I'm going to the hospital.' I arrived at the hospital and when I opened the door I did not see the wounded. "A few minutes to recover. It was a very, very serious attack. 70 wounded arrived at the emergency room. It was very difficult. My daughter's fear saved us, and thank God I listened to her."
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