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JERUSALEM-A rabbi killed in last week's coordinated terrorist raids in India was so fearful his Jewish outreach center would be attacked he forbade media photographers from snapping pictures inside the building, believing terrorists were seeking information on the building's layout."[Rabbi Holtzberg] constantly spoke of his fear of a terrorist attack in the Chabad House," said Meie Alfasi, a photographer for Shterum.org, a news website affiliated with the Chabad Lubavitch Jewish outreach movement. "Once I wanted to bring a Reuters photographer to document the Chabad House activities, but he was adamantly against the idea," said Alfasi."He said that he was afraid of pictures, afraid of photographers and afraid of unnecessary public exposure that could harm the Chabad House that is located in a very sensitive area," said Alfasi, who spent time a few months ago India, staying for a few days at the home of the Holtzbergs.Gavriel Holtzberg, his wife, Rivka, and three other Israelis, as well as a Jews from the U.S. and Mexico, were killed after terrorists stormed Nariman House, a building in the heart of Mumbai's tourist center where the Chabad headquarters is located. The Holtzbergs had duel U.S. and Israeli citizenship. It was not immediately clear whether the Jews were killed by terrorists or during an ensuing raid on the Chabad house by Indian security forces.A top Chabad official, speaking to WND on condition of anonymity, said he believes the Indian forces were "not competent." The official was in close coordination during last week's drama with Indian officials as well as Israel's foreign ministry and the FBI.Levi Shemtov, executive director of Chabad in Washington, D.C., told Israel's Army Radio yesterday he talked several times by phone with one of the terrorists holed up inside Nariman House. He said a terrorist answered Holzberg's cell phone and claimed the hostages inside were all alive."I tried and tried and tried, and in the end someone answered and said, 'hello,'" Shemtov said.Shemtov explained the man who answered said he was an Urdu speaker, so Shemtov found an Urdu translator and dialed again. The man who answered "sounded very calm" and said his name was "Imran.""He didn't want to tell me what he wanted. He said the rabbi was OK, everyone was OK, that if they did what he wanted he would free them," Shemtov said.Shemtov said the terrorist wanted to speak to the Indian government. He said he asked the man not to hurt the hostages and promised to help him get in touch with Indian officials."I asked if we could hear the voice of the rabbi, or someone who was alive there, and we only heard the voice of one woman screaming in English, 'please help immediately,'" he said."I asked him to pass the phone to the rabbi. He said, 'You've already asked for too much.'"Eventually, Shemtov said, the assailant said the cell phone battery was dying and hung up.During the initial attack, the Chabad center's cook, Sandra Samuel, managed to escape with the Holtzberg's 1-year-old son, Moshe."I took the child, I just grabbed the baby and ran out," said Samuel.She said that the rabbi and his wife, along with two other unidentified guests, were alive but were unconscious.By Aaron Klein
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