A 31-year-old Israeli mother of four who was lightly injured in a terrorist attack on Sunday said that her survival — and that of her year-and-a-half-old daughter, her sister and newborn niece — was “a bloody miracle.”
Aviva Yisraeli, a resident of the Judean community of Tekoa in Gush Etzion, recounted the horror of riding in her sister’s car, with their babies in tow, and watching a huge rock smash into the windshield.
Yisraeli – whose family immigrated to Israel from Canada when she was a young girl — described returning from the branch of the Tipat Halav baby wellness clinic in nearby Efrat, when an 18-year-old male Palestinian suddenly emerged from behind one of the cement security barriers along the road and hurled what she called a “boulder” head-on at their car.
“Glass was everywhere. The rear-view mirror flew off and hit me in the shoulder,” she said. “Miri, who was driving, yelled, ‘What do I do, what do I do?’ And I told her to keep going, until we could reach a manned lookout post. That’s what she did – thank God she didn’t lose control of the car — and when we got there, we called the IDF.”
Yisraeli, 31, said that though she owns a gun, it was not with her at the time, because she had been at her sister’s house before the two set out with the children, and she had left her weapon at home.
“But I’m grateful I didn’t have it with me,” she said, explaining that she would only ever shoot if she encountered a situation from which there was no other recourse. “We were able to drive away from the scene and seek help.”
Yisraeli said that one of the soldiers they approached asked her if she was carrying a gun. “I said, ‘No, and if I had been, I wouldn’t have used it; that’s your job,’” she explained, bemoaning the “label of ‘crazy settlers’ that is falsely and unjustly attached to us.”
Meanwhile, as she waited for her husband to pick her up and take her to the hospital (she refused the ambulance, because she would have been stuck having to get home by herself by public transportation or a taxi), Miri was unable to comfort or nurse her wailing infant.
“Miri had tiny shards of glass all over her clothes,” Yisraeli said. “And little cuts everywhere. It would have been too dangerous to take the baby. But thank God, both babies were unharmed — physically.”
Yisraeli also stressed her lack of surprise at the violence she and other Israelis continue to suffer at the hands of such terrorists. “They are raised to believe they should harm Jews. They are incited to do so by the Palestinian Authority. They are honored for committing these kinds of acts, which shouldn’t be justified, no matter who carries them out. That’s why, when Jews do something horrible, they are put in jail, not rewarded, like in the PA.”
‘See What Happens When You Teach Kids Hatred’
When she returned home from the hospital, Yisraeli said, her seven-year-old asked her why her arm was in a sling. “I told him that a bad boy had done it. He wanted to know if it was an Arab boy. I told him it doesn’t matter who the boy was. I don’t want him to grow up with hate. You see what happens when you teach your kids hatred.”
The attack in question is part of the surge in Palestinian terrorism that began in September, and has continued until now – albeit with lower frequency.
American-Israeli journalist Josh Hasten, a resident of a different community in Gush Etzion — who was the victim of a similar rock attack two weeks ago near the spot where Yisraeli was hit — said: “It’s great that stabbing and other attacks are statistically down. However, according to the Hatzalah emergency medical response organization in Judea and Samaria, there is an average of 10-15 rock and firebomb attacks daily. Sometimes there are as many as 30 per day, including on the day that I was attacked. The government has to crack down on this phenomenon, because rocks are deadly weapons.”
Hasten also survived a near lynching at the hands of an angry Arab mob in October.
By: Ruthie Blum, The Algemeiner
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