The Priest, the Rabbi and the Beirut Terrorist Attack of 1983

While the current Israel-Hamas war rages: a tale of interfaith respect from an earlier conflict in the Middle East.

“I had been brushing my teeth, when the building shook, windows exploded, and the doors came off their hinges. I ‘hit the deck,’ thinking it was our building that had been hit by a mortar or a shell. I got to my feet and took a moment to give thanks that the building had withstood the attack. Only then did we begin to hear the screams from the other building and realized what we had experienced had been a result of the explosive force of the blast next door.”

It is Sunday, Oct. 23, 1983.

Location: Beirut, Lebanon.

And these are the words of Rabbi Arnold Resnicoff, a U.S. Navy chaplain.

Still stunned, the rabbi heard the words “Follow me!” from Father George Pucciarelli, Catholic chaplain to the Marine Amphibious Unit. As the two men started to run, Rabbi Resnicoff noticed the priest placing a purple stole around his neck.

The rabbi and priest soon emerged to a scene of almost unbelievable destruction and carnage.

Speaking to the Register from his home in Washington, D.C., Rabbi Resnicoff began, “I have many, many memories of this terrible attack. For one thing, when we ran outside our building to see what had happened, it was the first time in my life that I truly understood the expression ‘I could not believe my eyes.’”

“The giant four-story building that I expected to see was so demolished that it seemed as if it had just disappeared,” he said. “Somehow, I thought that I was looking in the wrong direction or had made a wrong turn, until slowly, finally, I could begin to focus; and through the smoke and the air filled with dust, I could see the rubble, the bodies and, worst of all, the pieces of bodies strewn throughout the area.”

Continued below.