This Day in History > The Dolphinarium Discotheque Massacre was a Hamas Terror Attack

Wikipedia

The Dolphinarium discotheque massacre was a Hamas terror attack on 1 June 2001 in which a Hamas-affiliated Islamist terrorist blew himself up outside a nightclub on the beachfront in Tel Aviv, Israel, killing 21 Israelis, 16 of them teenagers. The majority of the victims were Israeli teenage girls, whose families had recently immigrated from the former Soviet Union.

Suicide bomber Saeed Hotari was standing in line on a Friday night in front of the Dolphinarium, when the area was packed with teenagers. Most of the crowd were young people from Russian-speaking families from the former Soviet Union, who were waiting for admission to a dance party at the Dolphin disco, and others were in line to enter the adjacent nightclub. 

Survivors of the attack later described how the young Palestinian bomber appeared to taunt his victims before the explosion, wandering among them dressed in a disguise that led his victims to mistake him for an Orthodox Jew from Asia. 

Before detonating his bomb, he banged a drum packed with explosives and ball-bearings, while taunting his victims in Hebrew with the words "Something's going to happen". At 23:27, he detonated his explosive device. Witnesses claimed that body parts lay all over the area, and that bodies were piled one above another on the sidewalk before being collected. Many civilians in the vicinity of the bombing rushed to assist emergency services.

The suicide bombing followed a failed attack attempt on the same target five months earlier.

Fatalities

Dolphinarium Massacre memorial at the Tel Aviv Dolphinarium site with the names of the victims written in Russian

One Israeli soldier and 20 civilians, the majority teenage girls whose parents had made aliyah to Israel from the former Soviet Union, were murdered in the attack: 

Maria Tagiltseva, 14, of Netanya 
Raisa Nimrovsky, 15, of Netanya 
Ana Kazachkova, 15, of Holon 
Katherine Kastaniyada-Talkir, 15, of Ramat Gan 
Irina Nepomnyashchi, 16, of Bat Yam 
Mariana Medvedenko, 16, of Tel Aviv 
Yulia Nelimov, 16, of Tel Aviv 
Liana Saakyan, 16, of Ramat Gan 
Marina Berkovizki, 17, of Tel Aviv 
Simona Rodin, 18, of Holon 
Aleksei Lupalu, 16, of Ukraine 
Yelena Nelimov, 18, of Tel Aviv 
Irena Usdachi, 18, of Holon 
Ilya Gutman, 19, of Bat Yam 
Roman Dezanshvili, 21, of Bat Yam 
Pvt. Diez (Dani) Normanov, 21, of Tel Aviv 
Ori Shahar, 32, of Ramat Gan 
Yael-Yulia Sklianik, 15, of Holon  – died of her injuries on 2 June 2001
Sergei Panchenko, 20, Ukraine  – died of his injuries on 2 June 2001
Jan Bloom, 25, of Ramat Gan  – died of his injuries on 3 June 2001
Yevgeniya Dorfman, 15, of Bat Yam  – died of her injuries on 19 June 2001

Perpetrators

Both Islamic Jihad and a group calling itself "Hezbollah-Palestine" originally claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing, only to later retract the claims. Later on, it was revealed that the attack was carried out by Saeed Hotari, aged 22, a militant linked to the Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas. 

Of course, Saeed thought he was going to wake up in Paradise surrounded by a whole bunch of little virgins, some little boys, and maybe a goat or two. But, that was not where he woke up!