Terrorism victim Ari Fuld knew transferring the United States Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem was an “act of solidarity with the truth,” American Ambassador to Israel David Friedman said at a memorial ceremony Sunday in Gush Etzion to mark one year since the murder of the well-known 45-year old American-Israeli.
“I remember how excited Ari was on the day we opened the US embassy in Jerusalem some 17 months ago,” said Friedman. The point that reverberated for him “over and over again, was not that the opening of the embassy was good, not that it was the right policy… but rather what Ari said is that opening our embassy in Jerusalem was an act in solidarity with the truth.
“The US did not discover something new when it opened our embassy there. Rather, the US was the first among nations to take a stand for the truth in recognizing the Jerusalem as undeniable eternal status as the capital of Israel and Ari implicitly recognized this,” Friedman said.
“It was a great privilege to see Ari rejoice at [US] President [Donald] Trump’s decision. While we had no doubt that we had taken the right path, the positive reinforcement from an American, an Israeli and a Jew of Ari’s stature was most welcome,” Friedman said.
A native of New York, Fuld had immigrated to Israel and lived in the West Bank settlement of Efrat. A father of four children and well-known social media personality and Israeli advocate, he was stabbed to death by a Palestinian terrorist on September 16, as he stood in the parking lot of the mall at the Gush Etzion junction.
Though mortally wounded, Fuld raced after the terrorist and shot at him in an attempt to disarm him and prevent him from killing others, before he himself collapsed.
“It is now, exactly one year later, and life has continued but no one has recovered, no one can fully recover from such a tragedy,” Friedman said.
“Standing here on this hallowed ground where Ari took his last breaths and with those last breaths saved others from the fate to which he had been decreed,” Freedman said he could not help but recall the biblical murder of Cain by his brother Abel.
Just as God heard Cain’s voice crying from the ground, so too, “Ari’s voice cries out to us from this very ground,” Friedman said.
To the Fuld family, Friedman said, that Trump and the Trump administration “are with you as you observe the first anniversary of Ari’s murder.”