Devorah Halberstam receives the 2009 community leadership award from the FBI, which calls her a \u201cvital asset in our fight against terrorism.\u201d (Courtesy of Devorah Halberstam)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Halberstam\u2019s campaign, which focused on having her son\u2019s shooting recognized as a terrorist act, wasn\u2019t merely semantic. To her, the issue cut to the heart of what she saw as the authorities\u2019 failure to fully pursue other avenues of investigation: Who helped inspire the attack, plan it, abet it and conspire to shelter Baz in the hours after the shooting?<\/p>\n
On the surface, the attack appeared to be an Arab gunman\u2019s angry response to the massacre in Hebron several days earlier, when 29 Palestinians were gunned down by Baruch Goldstein, a West Bank settler.<\/p>\n
The young Halberstam had been a passenger in a van full of Hasidic boys that was trailing the motorcade of the Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, on a trip home from the hospital for eye surgery. Halberstam believes the van became a Jewish target of convenience once the rebbe\u2019s vehicle disappeared into a tunnel.<\/p>\n
In the condolence letter that President Clinton wrote to the family, he pledged his \u201ccommitment to deal with the hatred and criminality that caused your son\u2019s death.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the lawyer for Baz, who had an arsenal of weapons with him that day, maintained the shooting was the result of a traffic dispute carried out by a lone assailant without assistance. No official motive was determined at the trial.<\/p>\n
Halberstam wanted more. She worked to collect letters of support from powerful politicians, got a Brooklyn Bridge ramp named for her son and raised millions of dollars for the construction of a Jewish children\u2019s museum in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn dedicated to Ari\u2019s memory. She sued the companies that manufactured the guns used in her son\u2019s killing (and lost). She pushed the state to pass Ari\u2019s Law, which requires a license to possess a gun kit and is meant to curtail interstate gun trafficking.<\/p>\n
All the while, her son\u2019s case remained closed.<\/p>\n
The turning point came in 1999, when media reports about the case sparked renewed calls by New York\u2019s governor, U.S. senators and congressmen for a reassessment. The FBI finally responded, describing the shooting as an act of \u201croad rage.\u201d<\/p>\n
The imprudence of the designation ultimately led to Halberstam\u2019s triumph: Under public pressure, the FBI assigned an agent in May 1999 to review the case, and in December 2000 the agency officially conceded that the shooting indeed had been an act of terrorism.<\/p>\n
But Halberstam\u2019s campaign was not over.<\/p>\n
She kept pushing for the investigation of unfollowed leads, arguing that counterterrorism required a different approach to law enforcement. In June 2000, New York\u2019s then governor, George Pataki, appointed her to serve on the state\u2019s first Commission on Terrorism. For Halberstam, the idea wasn\u2019t just to make sure that those who aided Baz were punished — though it was that, too. Hers was a campaign to have authorities deal differently with terrorist crimes, to scrutinize the milieu from which terrorists came, map their networks and monitor their associates.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow we can clearly see that it was part of a whole pattern of terrorist activity that keeps repeating itself,\u201d former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said in 2009 of the Halberstam shooting.<\/p>\n
After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that kind of aggressive, holistic approach to terrorist crimes suddenly didn\u2019t seem like a paranoid overreaction. In the ensuing years, close, ongoing scrutiny became de rigueur, as the trove of revelations from Edward Snowden has made clear.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn a way, the attacks of 9\/11 have really validated her position and given her increased credibility,\u201d Kelly said of Halberstam. \u201cHer stressing this issue before 9\/11 was important, but clearly the horrific events of 9\/11 really galvanized the law enforcement community, and she\u2019s been a player in it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Halberstam\u2019s own public profile changed in tandem with the new prioritization of counterterrorism. In 2009, in a sign of how dramatically Halberstam had gone from victim to authority, she received a community leadership award from the office of the FBI director, which hailed her as a \u201cvital asset in our fight against terrorism.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe has become an expert on the topic of terrorism, and is well versed as to the various terrorist entities such as Hamas, Hezbollah and al-Qaida, to name just a few,\u201d Joseph Demarest, assistant director of the FBI\u2019s Cyber Division, told JTA. \u201cShe has truly taken, one could argue, the most horrific event — losing a child — and used it as a catalyst for good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over the years, Halberstam also found validation of some of her suspicions in Ari\u2019s case.<\/p>\n
In 2007, Baz in a confession corroborated Halberstam\u2019s longtime contention that his real target had been the Lubavitcher rebbe. Last year, the Palestinian uncle who Halberstam long had claimed provided Baz with the weapons he used in the shooting was arrested for allegedly being part of a multistate cigarette-smuggling ring with terrorist ties.<\/p>\n
Today, Halberstam isn\u2019t only concerned with terrorism. She organizes meetings in Crown Heights to help tamp down tensions between blacks and Jews, including after the spate of \u201cknockout attacks\u201d in Brooklyn last fall. She continues to raise money for the Jewish Children\u2019s Museum, where many of her community encounter programs take place and which sits across the street from Lubavitch world headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway.<\/p>\n
Lately, she\u2019s also been trying to organize a conference on protecting the homeland in the age of terrorism. And she spends time, when she can, with her grandchildren, three of whom are named for Ari.<\/p>\n
What drives her to do all this, Halberstam says, isn\u2019t just justice. It\u2019s about trying to make sure other mothers don\u2019t have to endure the loss and pain that was thrust upon her 20 years ago — and remains with her every day, still.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like I have an obligation to my child,\u201d she said. \u201cSomebody else stole his life. And I don\u2019t think just somebody else; it\u2019s a system that was in place. And I believe no matter how long it will take, I will not stop.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s like breaking up a gang, and we have to fight this. I don\u2019t know if I\u2019ll see it in my lifetime, but I sure as hell am going to continue doing it until the day I die, as long as I live on this earth.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/DSCF0129-1.jpg\" "\\"DSCF0129-1\\"")