(JTA) — The niece of a Scottish student who died in a Tel Aviv terrorist attack in 2002 visited that city with dozens of Jewish children from the United Kingdom, many of them seeing Israel for the first time.
Chloe Jesner, 13, landed in Israel last month as part of a group of 100 British Jewish children touring the country for three weeks this summer in an initiative by the JNF UK charity to counter anti-Israel sentiment, organizers of the new program said.
Her uncle, Yoni, came from Glasgow, Scotland, to study at Yeshivat Har Etzion in 2002 and was killed, along with five others, in a September bombing that year during the second intifada. Hamas claimed to have carried out the attack, in which a suicide bomber set off an explosive charge aboard a bus on Allenby Street.
The tour that brought his niece to Israel exposes participants to projects such as a peace center, where Jewish and Arab children with disabilities receive treatment thanks to the support of world Jewry.
“The program helped me connect to Israel and better deal with the way Israel is presented in Britain” Chloe said.
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