Galia Sprung – When Terror Comes to You
Terror came close to us today.
A few months ago, after twenty-four years in the Shomron, we sold our home and moved to Tzur Yitzhak. Our reason was practical, even mundane – too many stairs in our house. It was time for a one-story apartment. Some friends embraced our choice for another reason: They had been uneasy about visiting us “over the Green Line.”
Unfortunately, what happened this week proves again that terror is everywhere. Terrorists don’t care where you live. Judea, Samaria, the Jordan Rift Valley, or the center of Tel Aviv or Los Angeles. It happens because terrorists exist and they want to kill Jews -all infidels- no matter where we live.
On June 7th, we made the news. An Israeli Arab from Tayibe, the town next to our new community, left his home and drove five miles south on the main road to the town of Kochav Yair where he shot two people at the gas station, then drove back towards Tayibe but turned into my town, Tzur Yitzhak, continuing his attack, which turned deadly when he killed one man and seriously wounded another as he drove towards the two moshavim up the road from us.
Right now, I’m in denial, but not because terror came close to me in our new home, but because of those nagging, creeping-on-trauma thoughts – No, I wasn’t filling up my car at the gas station inside Kochav Yair/Tzur Yigal. But that’s my regular station. I pass by it at least four times a week when I drive into Kochav Yair for chugim – classes.
No, I wasn’t the woman he shot in her car on our street. But those thoughts persist. I was so close to being there. I saw the timeline. I’m sure our paths crossed. The terrorist drove right past our apartment. Had I left our apartment just a few minutes earlier, who knows?
I wasn’t aware of this when I reached the traffic circle near the gates to our community. Traffic was at a standstill. It shouldn’t have been at that hour. I was annoyed. I would be late for my exercise class, five minutes away in Kochav Yair. Should I give up and go home or hope traffic starts moving?
News flash on my phone: A man was shot at the Kochav Yair gas station. A minute later, another news flash: Another shooting at the entrance to Tzur Yitzhak!
Here?
I knew traffic would remain at a permanent impasse. Fortunately, I was still in the circle and could inch my way around it back towards our apartment before all the roads closed completely.
I thought at first that the shootings were criminal acts: assassination of rivals or feudal retributions in the Arab sector. Two large Israeli Arab towns are our neighbors. Sadly, they suffer frequent targeted shootings.
I was very wrong.
“Turn on the TV,” I tell my husband. “Something’s going on here.”
TV anchors are talking about a pigua – a terrorist attack. We hear sirens. Not alerts – ambulances. Police. Our balcony opens to the street leading up to the two moshavim. I wonder why the ambulances are going up the road to Tzur Natan and Sal’it. The shootings are in the other direction- towards the main road. I am confused.
Armored personal carriers rumble by. One. Another one. Another one. I count five. A scary number. What is going on? Military jeeps, rescue units, police cars, black vans. White sedans – the kind the senior commanders might be sitting in. Helicopters. Ambulances scream past our apartment on the return trip as they carry wounded from the two moshavim to the hospital in Kfar Saba. Later the forensic vans and black SUVs with flashing blue and red lights rush towards the moshavim.
Hours of piercing sirens. I am frightened not by the noise, but by their existence. Heavy combat power. I watch the vehicles pass by my apartment. I watch the news and see my town in background loops.
Phone calls. Worried friends and family. More ambulances, army, police. I can’t hear over the sirens. Many text their concerns. I answer everyone and realize if I wrote on a few main chats that we are fine, it would put some calm into the situation.
My phone emits that familiar jarring ringtone:
Extreme Alert! Terrorist Infiltration. Go to your protected space!
I had never received an alert from Homefront Command that wasn’t for missiles. Ominous. Full disclosure. We did not go into our security room. We bolted the front door, yes, but I spent a lot of the time on the balcony trying to comprehend the scenes below me.
I lived most of my fifty-five years in Israel in the Jordan Rift Valley and the Shomron and never had dozens of soldiers in full tactical gear walking in two columns down my street or teams of soldiers searching parking lots and walking paths.
Reports contradict each other.
One terrorist neutralized. Security forces are searching for another. The second one is eliminated. No. Only one. Much later: There was never a second shooter. Still, helicopters circle overhead.
Almost four hours later, we receive official notice that the event has ended. We learn that the assistant head of security of Tzur Natan was killed and five civilians wounded in the three shooting attacks, including Tzur Natan’s head of security.
The immediate drama lessens, but security forces remain. The gates into Tzur Yitzhak and the two moshavim reopen, allowing people who had sat in cars for hours to start the slow crawl to their destinations. Schoolchildren are released from full lockdown in four communities. We trickle back into our routines.
We have tickets for a performance in the evening in Ra’anana, about 20 minutes away. An informal evening of music from the 60s and 70s. I am sitting with my husband and four friends. The music is too loud. I can’t sit still. I am thinking too much. The day is seeping into my soul. While everyone is applauding and cheering the first number, I discreetly leave. I take some paper and a pen from the registration table and find a place to sit and write. I can still hear the music, but I am alone with my attempt to make sense of the day. The trauma of “what if” keeps the adrenaline speeding through me. I think about all the people who have experienced extreme situations of “what if” and their trauma takes on a new meaning for me. I look around the room filled with Anglos – the term used for immigrants from English-speaking countries – and wonder how many of them are carrying trauma of any degree with them. I think we all do to some extent, but each kind can affect you differently. I was “stoned” once while driving in the Shomron. The force of the stones cracked the windshield and dented the hood and my door but missed my window. I was fine. No trauma. I drive by the same place quite often. Maybe because there was no “what if?” because it did happen. And it was finished. For me. Someone else can react differently.
My husband joins me outside where the double doors open to a patio of the Ra’anana Bowls Club. A few couples are dancing to the Beatles or quietly chatting.
The performers, Jokers and Thieves, immigrants themselves, acknowledge the difficult day of a terror attack nearby and the announcement that three more of our soldiers were killed in Lebanon.
“We’ve had a tough day,” the band leader says, “but we continue with song. That’s what keeps us going. That’s who we are.”
They choose “Here Comes the Sun” to express our shared outlook. We all join the chorus.
We are surrounded by potential trauma wherever we go. A few weeks ago, friends on the Israeli cruise line Mano were “greeted” by protesters and threats in every port. Antisemitic attacks around the world — including in my hometown of Los Angeles — feel like traumas waiting to happen.
I’ve seen the background loops of the places where I grew up, and the loops of attacks against Jews everywhere. Why shouldn’t my home in the center of Israel be in a news loop?
We must live our lives on our terms and cope with the challenges that come with those choices wherever we are. I dictate the terms of my life – and I sing, “Here Comes the Sun.”
Published in the San Diego Jewish Journal, July 2026 Issue
