After being seriously wounded and losing her child in a terrorist attack, Shira Ish-Ran defiantly insisted she’d bring more children into the world and strengthen the Hebrew nation.
By Pesach Benson, United With Israel
Shira Ish-Ran, who was seriously injured after being shot by a Hamas terrorist in 2018, delivered a baby boy on Monday.
In 2018, on the last night of Chanukah, Amichai and Shira were injured in a drive-by shooting at a bus stop outside the Jewish community of Ofra in Samaria. Shira was seven months pregnant. Doctors at Shaare Zedek hospital in Jerusalem performed an emergency caesarean but the boy died after three days in intensive care.
In a message to United with Israel, among others, her father announced the birth late Monday night.
“Wonderful news, unbelievable gratitude to Hashem [God] – A son born to our daughter Shira and her husband Amichai this morning. Both are doing well thank G-d. Some closure after they were critically injured from a terror attack two and a half years ago,” wrote Chaim Silberstein, a South African expatriate who founded Im Eshkachech – Keep Jerusalem, an education and policy research organization dedicated to strengthening the Israeli capital.
Briefly describing the anguish of the terror attack and Shira’s lost pregnancy, Silberstein wrote, “We are ecstatic for Amichai and Shira and think they are heroes. It’s amazing how they have weathered the trauma of the terror attack, and while still in rehab, have fulfilled Shira’s tearful declaration while she was holding Amiad Yisrael minutes before he passed: ‘We’ll show them, we’ll bring more children to the world – Am Yisrael Chai!””
Before the baby was buried on the Mount of Olives cemetery, he was given a symbolic posthumous circumcision and named Amiad Yisrael – meaning My nation Israel lives forever.
After the attack, Shira vowed to bring more babies into the world.
The gunmen, Asem Barghouti and his brother Salih, were affiliated with Hamas. Salih was killed by Israeli security forces while trying to evade arrest. Asem was given four life sentences for the Ofra attack and his role in a separate shooting at the Givat Assaf outpost, also in Samaria. Sgt. Yosef Cohen and Staff Sgt. Yovel Mor Yosef were killed in that 2018 attack.
For his acts of terror, Barghouti is receiving a fat monthly terror stipend from the Palestinian Authority to the tune of NIS 12,000 ($3,700).