'Rina saved us all, she absorbed it all': Dad recalls blast that killed daughter
“I wanted to believe it was just a dream,” said Rabbi Eitan Shnerb on Friday, recounting the deadly explosion that killed his daughter Rina and wounded him and his son Dvir as they were hiking down to a popular West Bank spring.
“We started going down toward the spring, [and] as we came close to the spring there was a roadside bomb. I have experienced several bombs in my life and been saved, thank God, but this one got us,” Shnerb told reporters from his hospital bed.
Shnerb spoke hours after his daughter was buried in their hometown of Lod. He was unable to attend he funeral because of his wounds.
“Immediately after the attack, I understood … At first I wanted to believe it was just a [bad] dream, but when I saw Rina, I knew we had to do something,” he said.
“Dvir said to me we will be strong, we will protect the people of Israel and the Torah of Israel, and together we will move forward,” he said. “That’s what I also told Rina. At the same moment, her face was unmarked and serene, I gave her a kiss and I told her we will make sure to be strong.”
“Rina saved us, she absorbed it all,” he said.
Earlier he spoke at the funeral by phone, saying that: “We are trying to be strong here in the Land of Israel, the people of Israel, Rina believed in that.”
“Our response to the murderers is that we are here and we are strong and we will prevail.”
Hamas lauds 'heroic' perpetrators of bombing attack in which Israeli teen killed
The Hamas terror organization on Friday praised the perpetrators of a bombing in the West Bank that claimed the life of a 17-year-old Israeli girl and seriously injured her father and brother.
No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, and Israeli officials have yet to indicate who could have been behind the deadly attack.
Hamas in a statement said the bomb attack was “proof of the vitality and bravery of the Palestinian people, and of the fact that it will not surrender to the crimes and terrorism of the occupation.”The group noted that it came on the 50th anniversary of the torching of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, and said it showed that “our people have not abandoned and will not abandon the Al-Aqsa Mosque even for a day, whoever the victims may be.”
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, in his Friday sermon in the Gaza Strip, called the killing “a heroic attack,” though he claimed ignorance as to who was responsible.
But it “shows that the default state in the West Bank is one of resistance, despite what our residents suffer there. The West Bank has strong people who are no less faithful and steadfast than their brethren in Gaza,” he said.
Deadly Friday attack shows W. Bank heating up, as Hamas senses Israeli weakness
The terrorist attack at a spring near Dolev on Friday, in which Rina Shnerb was killed and her father and brother were injured, was far from a bolt from the blue given the current atmosphere among Palestinians in the West Bank. And there are growing concerns that things could get far worse.
As so often in the past, the initial reaction from some in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government focused on the Palestinian Authority and its president, Mahmoud Abbas, blamed as the inciter of terrorism. Transportation Minister Bezalel Smotrich, for instance, called for the dismantling of the PA and Israeli annexation of the West Bank, neglecting to mention that the PA has been working in coordination with the IDF to try to thwart terror attacks.
The ferment among West Bank Palestinians, the growing calls for violence and the escalation in terrorism are being stirred from Gaza by its ruling terror group, Hamas, in its ongoing face-off with Netanyahu. What Netanyahu’s bitter critic and former defense minister Avigdor Liberman described Friday as the prime minister’s “surrender” to the terrorists — his agreement to allow Qatar to distribute funds in Gaza to needy families (and in the past to Hamas employees), the easing of certain restrictions at border crossings, the improved electricity supply — amid intermittent rocket fire from Gaza into Israel, is seen on the Palestinian side as proof of weakness. Weakness to be exploited.
Israel is understood to be capitulating to Hamas demands, more than in the past, precisely when the level of violence is rising — with the rocket attacks, attempts by armed infiltrators to breach the Gaza border fence, violent demonstrations at the border and more. The Israeli government, including Minister Smotrich of course, is seen to be following a policy of seeking to pay off Hamas in return for relative calm. This is being internalized in the West Bank too, which means not only that more terrorism seems likely, but that the West Bank is generally in greater ferment, with Fatah activists also perceiving an Israeli capitulation.
The rising tension also comes after six months during which the PA — fuming that Israel was holding back part of the tax funds it collects on behalf of Ramallah, to compensate for the PA’s payments to the families of dead terrorists and to jailed terrorists and security prisoners — refused to accept any of the tax payments at all. That meant some 160,000 employees were receiving only half their salaries. This week, the PA announced that it had accepted a partial payment, of just over half a billion dollars, after reaching an agreement with Israel on the issue, in order to avert the collapse of the PA.
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