On Israel visit, PM Modi to meet 26/11 Mumbai attacks survivor saved by Indian nanny

Moshe was only two when he was rescued by his Indian nanny Sandra Samuel from two terrorists in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks.

Updated on: Jun 27, 2017, 07:23:29 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Shishir Gupta

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The hyphenation of Israel and India in the war on terror and religious extremism is set to be reiterated before the world when Prime Minister Narendra Modi meets 26/11 Mumbai massacre survivor Moshe Holtzberg on July 5 in Jerusalem.

Indian nanny Sandra Samuel kisses Moshe Holtzberg at his relative's house in Migdal Ha-Emek, northern Israel. (AP File Photo)

Moshe was only two when he was rescued by his Indian nanny Sandra Samuel from two terrorists of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayyeba (LeT). The terrorists had killed Moshe’s father Rabbi Gavriel and mother Rivkah — five months pregnant at the time— along with six others at Nariman Chabad House in Colaba in the Mumbai terror attacks.

Samuel is in touch with 11-year-old Moshe and was granted permanent resident status and honorary Israeli citizenship in 2010.

Israeli sources told Hindustan Times that the meeting should take place on July 5, but the time has not been fixed yet as Moshe lives with his maternal grandparents in Afula, 90km north of Tel Aviv. Moshe wants to be a rabbi and work in Mumbai, his grandfather Rabbi Shimon Rosenberg has said, and it is likely PM Modi will offer him all help in realising that ambition. “We are still working out the details and logistics of the meeting,” said a senior official on condition of anonymity.

Modi arrives in Tel Aviv on the evening of July 4 and leaves after a two-day stay in Jerusalem, a historic visit that will commemorate 25 years of India-Israel diplomatic ties.

The Nariman House attack resonated deeply in India and Israel. Israel President Reuven Rivlin went to Chabad House on November 23, 2016, when he also visited Moshe’s room. Chabad House has been restored to full functionality with the remainder of one wall whose bullet-pocked surface has been retained for as a reminder of the 26/11 horror.

Rabbi Gavriel and wife Rivkah were gunned down by Nasir aka Abu Umar and Babar Imran aka Abu Akashah on the telephonic instructions of LeT handler and pan-Islamic jihadist Sajjid Mir from a Karachi-based control room. Samuel found baby Moshe crying next to the bodies of his parents and rushed him to safety.

Including foreign nationals, 166 were killed and 600 injured in the 26/11 attacks. LeT emir Hafiz Saeed and two Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) officers are accused of orchestrating the massacre.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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