In an ironic twist, last week’s deadly terror attack in the village of al-Funduq, near Shechem, speeded up the rescue of a Jewish mother and her one-year-old son from an Arab village in the area.
In an ironic twist, last week’s deadly terror attack in the village of al-Funduq, near Shechem, speeded up the rescue of a Jewish mother and her one-year-old son from an Arab village in the area.
A month ago, the mother, Hadas*, began working in Kfar Saba, and, having the chance to see up close what Jewish life looked like, decided the time had come to return to her roots. The plan was to make her getaway next week.
But the attack in al-Funduq, on a road she passed every day – in which three Jews were murdered – made Hadas decide to speed things up. She contacted Yad L’Achim and asked its rescue team to go into high gear.
As soon as the call was received, activists were dispatched to the scene of the terror attack to arrange the escape. They instructed her to call the boy’s Muslim father, and persuade him to bring their infant son to her at one of the military checkpoints in the area.
He was hesitant to come, frightened as he was by the beefed up IDF presence, but Hadas explained that following the attack, all exits from Shechem would be blocked and she wouldn’t be able to get to work. She would have to remain in Kfar Saba to bring in the income the family desperately needed and had to have the baby with her to care for him.
The father agreed to come to a mutually agreed check point, and Yad L’Achim activists were positioned at various points overlooking the checkpoint, ready to intervene in case anything went wrong.
“Because of the terror attack, the rescue was rushed, and therefore more challenging as the village is very close to the area where the attack took place,” says A., who oversaw the Yad L’Achim operation. “With the help of soldiers on the ground, we succeeded in getting the child transferred to his mother, giving them a chance at a new life outside the village.”
Mother and child have been placed in a secret safe apartment where they will be living for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, she has been assigned a Yad L’Achim social worker who is providing ongoing support and arranging for packages that meet all her basic needs.
“We have merited to save two Jewish lives, with the help of inordinate Siyatta DiShmaya that made this dramatic rescue possible,” a Yad L’Achim official said. “Who knows what would have happened had we waited another week? We might not have had the same opportunity to help the mother and her son escape their Arab village.”
Photo Credit: Yad L’Achim
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