April 29, 2003 Terror attack: Mike’s Place, a beachfront bar in Tel Aviv

Murder

It was a bit after midnight, and the crowd at Mike’s Place, a beachfront bar in Tel Aviv. Was still thick, as people stayed for a jam session that attracted local musicians.

Joshua Faudem, who had worked an earlier shift tending bar, was seated outside; he was working on a documentary on the bar, and had brought his camera.

Mr. Faudem recalled that he and his girlfriend soon ducked back inside, and he remembered seeing a friend, whose birthday it was, onstage singing.

“Then, the explosion. There was a bomb,” Mr. Faudem testified on Thursday. “I immediately jumped on my girlfriend; I threw her on the ground and covered her.”

Running out, he said, he saw the body of a suicide bomber, who had “exploded at the entrance to the bar.”

Mr. Faudem was born in Detroit, and moved to Jerusalem when he was 8. After serving in the Israeli military and attending college, he moved back to Jerusalem in January 2003, initially living with his parents.

Mr. Faudem was in Tel Aviv when he noticed a bar called Mike’s Place, next to the American Embassy. He was familiar with a smaller version of the bar in Jerusalem; which he called a “very familiar hole-in-the-wall blues bar.” An owner of both bars was a family friend who had attended his Bar Mitzvah; after he stopped in, he said, he wound up with a job at Mike’s and an apartment to rent.

On April 29, 2003, as a junior bartender, he got the slower daytime shift. He finished work around 8p.m., and walked to his apartment, took a shower and ate. Mr. Faudem, who had studied filmmaking, was a few weeks into filming a documentary about Mike’s Place, and he returned to the bar with his camera around 10.

Around 12:30 a.m. on April 30, he was sitting outside with his girlfriend and his friend Jack Baxter, who was producing the film. The customers were saying goodbye to Mr. Baxter, who was headed back to New York. Mr. Faudem and his girlfriend walked inside. The bomb then went off at the entrance.

Two musicians and a bartender were killed in the bombing, and dozens were injured. Mr. Baxter suffered a brain contusion, hearing loss and burns; Mr. Faudem suffered hearing loss and post-traumatic stress from the attack. He would return to Mike’s Place to continue filming what was now a very different documentary.

Source: Clifford, Stephanie. The New York Times. At Arab Bank’s Terrorism Trial, Victim Recalls Seeing Suicide Bomber’s Body.