Teaching Team

Israeli Messianic Victim of Terror

By Daniel Lancaster  | Comments (6) | Posted on April 2, 2008

At 2:30 PM on Thursday March 20th, during the Fast of Esther and just hours before the festival of Purim began, 15 year old Ami Oritz picked up a Purim basket someone had left outside of his family's apartment in Ariel, Israel. The basket contained two pipe bombs packed with screws and bolts. The bombs detonated in his hands, sending shrapnel through his body. The blast was so strong that, according to some witnesses, it knocked out the windows of a car parked on the street below the apartment.

Terrorist incidents like this are, unfortunately, routine in today's world. They are not unusual in Israel where violence between Israelis and Palestinian terrorists is in the newspapers on a daily basis. But this particular incident strikes close to home for Messianic Jews and practitioners of Messianic Judaism. The Oritz family is a well-known Messianic family in Israel.

Ami is the captain of his high school basketball team. Four of Ami's siblings have served in the IDF and their father David has completed 15 years service in the defense of Israel.

Initially Ami was not expected to survive. Thankfully, HaShem has intervened and Ami's condition has stabilized. The doctor, a specialist in trauma who has treated several terrorist bombing victims, told Ami's father that a miracle has happened. He said he had never seen that kind of recovery. Nevertheless, Ami is badly hurt. He had a large piece of shrapnel in his left eye. He has lost hearing in one ear. Miraculously he sustained no brain damage. His neck is punctured and cut, but amazingly without arterial or spinal damage. His lungs are riddled with shrapnel and his breathing is labored. Several internal organs are damaged, but with God's help, none were destroyed. One leg, badly lacerated, may need to be amputated. He has 2nd and 3rd degree burns on his body, and in some places, his skin is gone.

Since the incident, Ami has regained consciousness, but is struggling with panic attacks and psychological trauma.

No one knows who is responsible for the bombing. Unfortunately, because the Oritz family is Messianic, the possibility exists that they were specifically targeted. If the act was not random, (and it is unlikely that it was) the Oritz family might have been targeted by Muslim terrorists who resent the evangelistic work of Messianic Jews among Israeli Arabs, or it may have even been Jewish radicals (God forbid) waging a private war against believers in Yeshua. Messianic communities have been targeted in the past by anti-missionary zealots. The Messianic Jewish community in Israel has endured threats, abuse and sometimes even fire bombing of places of assembly.

The Ariel police force took up a collection for the Oritz family this week. Perhaps God may be using this horrible incident to make Israeli Jews rethink their attitude toward Messianic Israelis.

Please pray for a speedy and complete healing, a healing of the body and a healing of the soul for Ami ben Leah, a member of Israel. Pray also for the Oritz family, that God would provide them with comfort and grace. Pray for the Israeli Messianic community, for their protection, their prosperity and that they would grow in the love of Yeshua and the ways of Torah.

D. Thomas Lancaster
26 Adar II, 5768

About the Author: Daniel Lancaster is FFOZ’s Director of Education and regular contributor to messiah magazine. He is the author of Torah Club Volumes Two, Four and Five, and the FFOZ books Mystery of the Gospel, Restoration and more.

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