Son of Israeli ambassador to the US seriously injured in vehicle attack near Jerusalem

Two years and 10 months after the death in combat of his eldest son, Moshe Yedidia, in the Gaza Strip, in the offensive launched after the Hamas attacks in southern Israel, the Israeli ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, has confirmed that another of his sons, Neria Dov ben Chana (39), is the soldier seriously injured this afternoon in a vehicle attack committed by a Palestinian. After ramming the patrol car in which the Israeli was serving as a reservist near the settlement of Beit Horon, in the north of Jerusalem, the attacker was killed.

Doctors at Shaare Zedek Hospital in Jerusalem are fighting for the life of the son of the Israeli ambassador, who is in critical condition. Leiter, who traveled to Israel as soon as he heard the news, has written in Hebrew and English on Platform X: "I believe in the power of prayer and I believe that when the people of Israel come together, miracles happen. Neria needs a miracle."

"Palestinian terrorism seeks to tear the people of Israel from their land. They choose death, we choose life," Leiter added. As he said, "Neria continued to serve in the reserves after losing his older brother, Moshe Yedidya Leiter, of blessed memory. Since October 7, he has served hundreds of days in the reserves on multiple fronts."

Shortly after five in the afternoon this Wednesday, Mahmoud Muhammad Mahmoud Suleiman (29) arrived with his car and ran over his son at an intersection on Highway 443, north of Jerusalem. The attacker was from Beit Ur al Tahta, a West Bank village near the site of the attack. According to the army, he did not belong to any group. Hamas did not claim responsibility for the attack on the Israeli police car, but praised what it calls a "natural response" to Israel's actions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and called for more attacks.

Last Sunday, a few hours before the start of Yom Kippur in Israel, Israeli Netanel Shukrun was shot dead at a spring in the West Bank. The Palestinian attacker was wounded, and was detained hours later by Israeli soldiers at a clinic in the Ramallah area. Shukrun, also a French national and resident of the Jewish settlement of Alei Zahav, was the father of six children. One of them, the oldest, was in the car when his father was shot. Before, he yelled at him to run to save himself.

The Israeli army has 26 battalions deployed in the volatile West Bank not only for its main declared mission (to abort Palestinian attacks and react as soon as possible if they occur), but also to avoid clashes and friction as a result of attacks, increasingly frequent in the last year, by young extremist settlers against Palestinians. Precisely this last phenomenon, highly criticized by Leiter, and the increase in settlement construction in the territory occupied by Israel in the '67 war have been recalled in the speeches of various leaders at the lectern of the UN General Assembly.