Father of 5 Fends Off Ax Attackers in West Bank Settlement
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
A father of five was attacked by two Palestinian teens brandishing clubs and axes as he left his home in the West Bank settlement of Eli.
The attackers were waiting outside of the family’s home when Roi Harel left his house at 5 a.m. on Wednesday, wearing an IDF uniform, to head to reserve duty. The attackers, both 17 and from a nearby Palestinian village according to the Palestinian Maan news agency, began attacking Harel with their weapons and entered the family home. Harel told reporters that he chased them to the doors of his children’s’ bedrooms and then managed to push them outside of his house and lock the door.
Harel was slightly injured in the attack, and was treated at Shaare Zedek medical center in Jerusalem for cuts to his head. The attackers, who left a knife stuck in the door of the home, fled from the scene on foot, and were killed by security forces who attempted to apprehend them.
“If anyone has any doubts as to their intentions, two 17-year-olds came to slaughter me, my wife and my kids. In the seconds during which I fought with them, I thought to myself that what happened to the Fogel and Gavish families. I screamed to my wife to call the settlement’s guard, the children woke up and cried but my wife was with them in the bedroom, so they hardly saw anything,” he told Ynet.
Ruth and Udi Fogel and three of their five children ages three months to 11, were brutally murdered in their beds by Palestinian attackers who entered their home in the West Bank settlement of Itamar. Four members of the Gavish family, including both parents, one of their seven children and a grandfather were killed by a Palestinian attacker in 2002 in their home in Elon Moreh, located near Nablus in the West Bank.
Eli is located about 20 miles north of Jerusalem, near Ramallah in the West Bank.
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