A Narrow Escape

You may have read in the news today about two Palestinians who broke into a house this afternoon and attacked the person inside. The house was my sister's house and the person was my niece.

My sister lives in Neve Tzuf, a community of about 300 families in the Binyamin region, several miles north of Ramallah. Her house is, unfortunately right on the edge of the moshav. This afternoon, my 16-year-old niece was home with a friend. She heard noises, and discovered that two Palestinian Arabs had broken in. When they saw her, they started beating her. Her friend rushed to her aid but they beat him too. At this point one of my nephews came home, sounded the alarm, and the Arabs fled.

Thank God, my niece and her friend were not seriously injured. Contrary to some media reports, they were not stabbed, only bruised, but they are very traumatized. The incident appears to have been a burglary gone wrong rather than a terrorist attack, although it's still not entirely clear; and in that part of the world, there's a fine line between the two that can easily be crossed.

(One of my older nieces, Miri Maoz-Ovadia, is the spokeswoman for the Binyamin Regional Council. You can read her article on the incident (in Hebrew) at this link.)

My sister and brother-in-law would be labelled as "settlers." They have two sons and one son-in-law currently fighting in Gaza, and another son who served in Shayelet 13. Most of the world would imagine them to be a family of brutal, cruel monsters. But I, on the other hand, know them all to be mild-mannered, soft spoken, extremely kind people, who voted Labor when they lived in England. They just want to be able to live in their homeland and help the rest of their nation live in peace and security. The monsters are those who would beat up a sixteen-year-old girl.


P.S. To all my close friends, family and neighbors that are reading this - please DO NOT ever mention this incident to my children. Hopefully they will not find out about it for a long, long time.