Israeli emergency response organization ZAKA will display the shattered shell of a bus that was attacked by a Palestinian suicide bomber, at the Jewish Expo 2003 in Manhattan later this month. Family members of the victims of this horrific attack are unhappy about ZAKA’s plan: N.Y. Fair to Display Bombed Israeli Bus.

Relatives of the bombing’s victims are outraged, and Israeli government officials have quietly questioned the wisdom of the plans by ZAKA Rescue and Recovery, an Israeli disaster response group.

The idea is bring home the horror of the terror attacks that have plagued Israel, as well as to raise funds for ZAKA, a group of mostly ultra-Orthodox Jewish volunteers who assist ambulance crews and identify and collect body parts for burial.

In three years of Israeli-Palestinian fighting, 413 people have been killed in 102 Palestinian suicide bombings, many of them targeting city buses.

The wreckage of the bus that was blown up in Jerusalem on June 18, 2002, killing 19 people, will be displayed in Manhattan at Jewish Expo 2003, scheduled for Dec. 20-22 the start of the Hanukkah holiday.

“We want people to know what’s really going on here,” said ZAKA spokesman Zelig Feiner, noting that both Israel and New York have been targets of terrorism. He said the project also is designed to raise money for the organization.

Feiner said ZAKA has received Israeli complaints that the display will offset efforts at the fair to boost tourism, which has been hurt by the violence. Survivors of terror attacks and families of victims also say they’re shocked by the planned display.

A spokesman for Israel’s Terror Victims Association, Meir Indor, said ZAKA’s display cheapens the deaths and survivors’ trauma, especially because it is being done partly to raise money.

“They’re marketing the blood of the people,” Indor said.

I’m of two minds about ZAKA’s plan. I fully understand and empathize with the family members’ pain and upset. But I also think this display has the potential of awakening the media-deadened consciences of people who might otherwise wander through the fair without coming away with any new inspirations.