It is almost impossible to comment upon this story:

Dr. David and Debra Applebaum and Zvi and Tamara Sand were to accompany their 20-year-old children Nava and Chanan to the bridal canopy in Jerusalem on Wednesday night, with hundreds of guests celebrating the event.
Instead, on Wednesday morning, thousands of mourners friends, doctors, nurses, patients, classmates, and admirers stood stunned at the Shamgar Funeral Home and said good-bye to David and his daughter Nava, two victims of Tuesday night's suicide bombing at Caf Hillel, which killed seven and wounded at least 30.
If Dr. Applebaum had not been at the Germany Colony cafe to have a heart-to-heart talk with his beloved daughter, he would undoubtedly have received a beeper message about the attack. He would have dropped everything, even on the eve of her wedding, and rushed to Shaare Zedek Hospital.
As director of the emergency department for more than a year, he had treated hundreds of terror victims and saved many lives. But the 50-year-old, American-born physician and his daughter died on the spot. He was identified by an Arab physician who worked at Jerusalem's Terem Urgent Care Clinic that Applebaum had founded in 1988. They never made it to Shaare Zedek's emergency room.
The staff had just finished treating a severely wounded victim, who died, when they first heard about the Applebaums. The stress of dealing with their own grief was helped by the fact that the number of wounded 11 or 12 was lower than in other attacks, director-general Jonathan Halevy said.
When Applebaum's death was confirmed, there was a gasp in the emergency room. People hugged each other and shook their heads in disbelief. Nava's intended, Chanan, fainted upon hearing of the deaths and had to receive medical attention.
"It was clear to me from very early on that when David Applebaum didn't show up, and I knew he was in Jerusalem and he hadn't called, that a terrible tragedy had occurred," Halevy said.
"Confirmation of my suspicions came shortly. Thousands of Jerusalemites owe Dr. Applebaum their lives. This is a terrible loss."
It was Halevy who managed to persuade Applebaum to return to the hospital, where the emergency physician had spent his initial years in Israel before establishing the Terem clinics, which pioneered community-based urgent care here and reduced the burden of less severe cases on hospital emergency wards.
Applebaum, born in Detroit, raised and educated in Cleveland, came on aliya with his wife, a Bible scholar and teacher, along with the eldest of their six children, in 1981. He had received rabbinical ordination at Yeshiva University, and was a student of the late Rabbi Aharon Soloveitchik.
Nava, a graduate of the Horev girls high school, was doing her National Service with Zichron Menahem, a voluntary organization devoted to children with cancer. From morning until late in the day, she spent time with the youngsters, and only a few weeks ago she accompanied a group of them on a trip to Holland.
"She had an incredible smile, and she was an incredible girl," said one of her Horev classmates. "She studied biology because she wanted to help find a cure for cancer."
When Debra and her five remaining children, Natan, 24; Yitzhak, 22; Shira, 18; Shayna, 15; and Tovi Belle, 12, learned of the deaths, they tore their clothes as required by Jewish tradition and hugged each other, said Rabbi Shubert (Eliezer) Spero, Debra's father.
In his eulogy, Spero said: "God gave man the ability to cry, sob, and shriek. But sometimes the tragedy is so painful that the mind shuts down."
...As he spoke, former Horev Yeshiva head Rabbi Mordechai Elon hugged Nava's never-to-be bridegroom, Chanan, who had met Nava two years ago. A Horev graduate and a student at Ateret Cohanim Yeshiva before doing his army service, he gently placed the wedding ring he had bought for the ceremony on the blue velvet cloth covering her shroud.

Click here for a more in-depth profile of Dr. Applebaum. And what was this doctor doing before his daughter's wedding?

Earlier this week, Dr. David Applebaum, director of ER at Shaare Zedek Hospital, flew to the US along with director-general Jonathan Halevy.
Applebaum decided not to turn down an invitation from New York University; hundreds of doctors and potential donors wanted to hear how Shaare Zedek has coped with mass medical catastrophe during the bloody years of the current wave of Palestinian violence.
Applebaum felt it was his duty to go, even though his daughter Nava was getting married on Wednesday night, some 30 hours after his return. It was important to him to show people abroad how Israeli medical professionals had learned to save the lives of the critically wounded, he said, and to raise funds for expanding and improving the hospital's overburdened emergency facilities.
While in New York, Applebaum turned on a computer and went into the internal Web site that gave him a real-time view of the goings on in the Jerusalem emergency room.
"You see, even without me, the emergency department is functioning like clockwork," he told Halevy. "The average wait to see a doctor is 16 minutes."
His staff in Jerusalem those who knew him from his tenure in the 1980s and those who worked under him in only the last 15 months will have to learn permanently to continue meeting his strict standards without him.

Keep in mind that the terrorist intended to kill these people. Their lives were the opposite of everything represented by Palestinian terror. I'm not going into the topic at length now, but it is worth noting that Palestinian nationalism followed a history of Jew-killing, not the other way around.

And here's one comment, by the Jerusalem Post editors:

The world will not help us; we must help ourselves. We must kill as many of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders as possible, as quickly possible, while minimizing collateral damage, but not letting that damage stop us. And we must kill Yasser Arafat, because the world leaves us no alternative.
No one seriously argues with the fact that Arafat was preventing Mahmoud Abbas, the prime minister he appointed, from combating terrorism, to the extent that was willing to do so. Almost no one seriously disputes that Abbas on whom Israel, the US, and Europe had placed all their bets failed primarily because Arafat retained control of much of the security apparatus, and that Arafat wanted him to fail.
The new prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, clearly will fare no better, since he, if anything, has been trying to garner more power for Arafat, not less.
Under these circumstances, the idea of exiling Arafat is gaining currency, but the standard objection is that he will be as much or more of a problem when free to travel the world than he is locked up in Ramallah.
If only three countries Britain, France, and Germany joined the US in a total boycott of Arafat this would not be the case. If these countries did not speak with Arafat, it would not matter much who did, and however much a local Palestinian leader would claim to consult with Arafat, his power would be gone.
But such a boycott will not happen. Only now, after more than 800 Israelis have died in three years of suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks, has Europe finally decided that Hamas is a terrorist organization. How much longer will it take before it cuts off Arafat? Yet Israel cannot accept a situation in which Arafat blocks any Palestinian break with terrorism, whether from here or in exile. Therefore, we are at another point in our history at which the diplomatic risks of defending ourselves are exceeded by the risks of not doing so.
Such was the case in the Six Day War, when Israel was forced to launch a preemptive attack or accept destruction. And when Menachem Begin decided to bomb the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981. And when Israel launched Operation Defensive Shield in Palestinian cities after the Passover Massacre of 2002.
In each case, Israel tried every fashion of restraint, every plea to the international community to take action that would avoid the need for "extreme" measures, all to no avail.
When the breaking point arrives, there is no point in taking half-measures. If we are going to be condemned in any case, we might as well do it right.

UPDATE: Here's the New York Times' profile of Dr. Applebaum.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Here's another profile of the family.