Four U.S. immigrants killed in Arava car accident

Four people were killed and three wounded in a car accident on the Arava Highway yesterday. Three of the dead were members of one family - Chaim (Charles) Bernstein, 54, his wife Roberta, 49, and their daughter, Batsheva, 18, all of Jerusalem. The Bernsteins' son Moshe, 11, was moderately to seriously injured.

The fourth fatality was Sharon Sabag, 49, of Beit Lehem Haglilit in the north. Her son Netanel, 12, was moderately to seriously injured, and her husband Yossi, 45, was lightly injured. All four of those killed were American immigrants.

The accident occurred at about 9 A.M. when the Bernsteins' car swerved out of its lane for reasons unknown, and crashed head-on into the Sabags' car near Kibbutz Ketura, 50 kilometers north of Eilat. Both cars went spinning, and one hit a road sign and overturned onto the road's shoulder.

A police officer noted yesterday that the Arava Highway "is not built for human error." Thirteen people have been killed on the road since the start of this year, and road safety experts have warned for years that it needs a crash barrier. However, Israeli policy is to build crash barriers only on four-lane highways, and the Arava Highway has only two lanes, one in each direction.

Moreover, to become a four-lane highway, at least 16,000 vehicles a day must use the road. The Arava Highway is used by only some 7,000 vehicles a day.

"It was a shocking sight," said Gabi Baribo, deputy manager of Eilat's Magen David Adom station. "The cars were almost completely destroyed. People were trapped in both vehicles."

According to Dr. Danny Golan of Soroka Medical Center's intensive care unit, both children were wearing seatbelts, and this almost certainly saved their lives. However, both suffered complicated stomach injuries, and one also suffered a leg injury.

A dog traveling in one of the cars was also killed.

The Bernsteins' neighbors in Jerusalem's Ramot neighborhood received the news with shock. "Chuck was someone who always did everything by the rules," said one. "He didn't speed, didn't pass. There must have been a problem with the car or something in the road."

Charles and Roberta Bernstein moved to Israel from New York City 21 years ago, immediately after their wedding, and came straight to Ramot. Neighbor Chava Kassel described how the contractor had promised her a house with a view, but the Bernsteins ended up getting it instead. "When they heard that we had been promised it, they insisted on switching with us," she said. "That's the kind of people they were."

The couple had three children - Batsheva, Moshe and Ofra, the oldest, who is currently a soldier-teacher in the army and is taking care of her brother in the hospital.

Neighbors said that the Bernsteins were a pillar of Ramot's English-speaking community, always quick to welcome new immigrants to the neighborhood. Charles, a computer scientist, ran his own company, Future Kids, which sold educational software to schools. He also ran computer education courses for adults in the neighborhood. Roberta, a social worker, worked for an organization that helped victims of terror attacks and their families.

"She was a social worker in every fiber of her being," said neighbor Dina Perlman. "We used to say that she had a golden heart and he had a golden head."

Chuck Bernstein was a cousin of well-known philanthropist Zalman C. Bernstein, who, among other projects, established the Avi Chai Foundation and was a major contributor to the Shalem Center. Ironically, the Shalem Center's annual Zalman C. Bernstein memorial lecture took place in Jerusalem last night, and Chuck and Roberta had planned to attend. They were killed while en route back to Jerusalem from a vacation in Timna.

The Bernsteins' funeral will be held on Wednesday, to enable relatives from America to attend, but the Mitzpeh Ramot Synagogue held its own memorial service last night. Bernstein had chaired the synagogue council for years, and the community felt a need to mourn together.

The neighborhood is also planning a memorial project. One possibility, said neighbor Noah Feldman, is to raise money to build a crash barrier on the Arava Highway.

Sharon Sabag immigrated from Chicago with her family as a child. She worked as a technical writer, while her husband worked in high-tech. The couple had three sons, but the elder two - Matan, 18, and Shai, 15 - were not in the car with them yesterday, having skipped the annual family vacation to Eilat.

Sabag loved music, and even recorded a disc of songs for which she composed the music and words herself, a neighbor said. "She was a wonderful mother," added her sister, Dalia. Funeral plans were still pending as of last night.

Altogether, 322 people have been killed in road accidents in Israel since the start of the year.