On Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, in Mumbai, India (formerly known as Bombay), Islamist terrorists armed with automatic weapons and grenades attacked ten separate targets, murdering nearly 200 civilians and Injured hundreds more.

The terrorists showed no mercy to any of their victims, targeting men, women, and children alike. One survivor described his encounter with one of the terrorists:

“He was holding quite a large machine gun type of weapon, which he just simply pointed at us, and started using it. People immediately in front of me and to the side of me I saw start to fall … [He was] 19, 20, maybe 21 years old, very young. At the time that he actually started to fire his gun, I saw him smile.”

The terrorist attacked the local offices of Chabad, an orthodox Jewish organization The Chabad house in Mumbai, like thousands of other Chabad houses throughout the world, is a place of light and life to local Jews and travelers alike – a place where Jews work to serve their fellow man and, in the words of one rabbi, to: “transform the world into a place of goodness and holiness.”

But terrorists, of course, do not respect such noble purposes. Tragically, the director of the center and his wife, Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg, were murdered along with others. The Holtzberg’s two-year-old son miraculously survived after escaping with his nanny. Many of the Jewish bodies revealed that they were tortured before being killed.

As always, the Islamists’ first choice of victims was Jews and Westerners. And we saw it again in Mumbai last week. One eyewitness, describing the chilling moment when the terrorists burst into a hotel to select and kill their victims, noted that the gunmen specifically targeted holders of British, American, and Israeli passports. An Indian doctor performing autopsies on the victims’ bodies told a chilling story of the especially brutal treatment reserved for Jewish victims.

Radical Islamists view anyone who does not subscribe to their hateful ideology as an “infidel.” But time and again – on September 11, 2001 in the U.S., as well as in the London Tube attacks, in the devastating 2003 attacks against two synagogues in Turkey, and the 2004 bombings of the Israeli and American embassies in Uzbekistan, to name just a few occasions Of all the bodies, the Israeli victims bore the maximum torture marks,” he said. “It was obvious that they were tied up and tortured before they were killed “.

How should Jews, Christians, Israelis, Americans, and indeed all people of goodwill respond in the face of such horrific evil? We should follow the example of Rivka Holtzberg’s parents, Shimon and Yehudit Rosenberg. After learning of their daughter’s and son-in-law’s murders, the Rosenbergs volunteered to carry on their work by going to Mumbai to run the Chabad house there.

In stark contrast to terrorist’s intent on spreading evil the Rosenbergs chose to act as a light, by serving others. (Indeed a candle set on a hill so all may see and have hope).

In the spirit of this season holy to both Christians and Jews, I urge you to do something good for someone each day in the coming weeks.

Frank Duncan

12-1-2008