JERUSALEM (JTA) — A father of five who was attacked by two Palestinian teens said he managed to shove his assailants out of his West Bank home before they could hurt his family.
Roi Harel was heading to army reserve duty in uniform at 5 a.m. Wednesday when the assailants attacked him with clubs and axes outside his home in the Eli settlement, then entered the premises, according to the Israel Defense Forces. Harel told reporters he chased them to the doors of his children’s bedrooms and managed to push them outside the house and lock the door.
Harel was treated at a Jerusalem hospital for cuts to his head.
The attackers were both 17 and from a nearby Palestinian village, according to the Palestinian Maan news agency. After leaving a knife stuck in the door of the home, they fled 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,” Harel told Ynet. “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.”
Ruth and Udi Fogel and three of their five children, aged 3 months to 11 years, were 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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