The Michael Cherney Foundation

The Michael Cherney Foundation earmarked a substantial sum of money for helping the victims of the Kaspiysk bombing and addressed their families in an open letter by its President.

Dear Friends,
And I mean friends both in grief and in our common struggle -
We the Russian-born Israelis realize the horror of what happened in Kaspiysk better than anyone else. The so-called "second intifada" - the terrorist war of Arafat's criminal regime on the State of Israel -- that started in the fall of 2000 also brought home the horror of this undeclared war to us, emigres from the former USSR.

The terrorist bombing outside a Tel Aviv disco called Dolphinarium was the most horrible blow struck against our community. On that day, June 1, 2001, 19 teenagers from the former USSR were killed and over 100 wounded.

The Kaspiysk bombing where over ten children were killed was a carbon copy of the Dolphinarium. The terrorists went beyond all that is human and deliberately targeted children - all in order to break our will and make us cave in to their demands.

Half a century ago all the ethnic groups of Russia, including the Jews, were fighting fascism side by side. Today, once again, our people are comrade in arms, as our two countries, Israel and Russia, are on the front lines of the battle against the new world evil called Islamism.

This horrendous distortion of Islam has become a plague that threatens to take over the world. Terrorists have turned Israel and Russia into testing grounds for their new tactic of killing civilians, especially children. They do it anywhere - on the street, in the market, in schools, in buses; they do it at random, regardless of the victims' nationality. Their purpose is to frighten the people to the extent where they would demand that their governments cave in to the terrorists' demands.

Only Russian people fully understand the danger to which Israel has been alerting the world for a long time: these are not "freedom fighters", as terrorists call themselves; these are bloodthirsty fanatics who reject the values of our civilization. They are convinced that their ends, creating bandit state tyrannies, justify any means. To them, a child is not someone to be protected and taken care of, but a convenient and effective target.

This evil must be stopped here and now. Together, people of Russia and Israel must call on the world to stop looking for political alibis for terrorism and join forces in this struggle instead. Together, we are more powerful than these new fascists.
Together, we shall prevail.