‘She ran back to the burning house to save her baby’

The Dawabsha family is being treated in two hospitals in Israel.

The mother and 4-year-old Ahmed Dawabsha are in Sheba Hospital at Tel Hashomer. Both are suffering extensive burn wounds throughout their bodies.

The father is being treated at Soroka Hospital in Beersheba and is listed in critical condition.

According to testimony from neighbors of the family, after the father rescued his wife and boy from the house, the mother tried to go back and rescue 18-month-old Ali Dawabsha. The baby was consumed by the flames. A Palestinian medic at the scene said he was “burned to ash.”

Visiting Ahmed in the children’s intensive care unit, President Reuven Rivlin looks visibly shaken.

In a statement to the press, he says: “We awoke this morning to a day of sorrow, I feel a sense of shame, and moreover a sense of pain. Pain over seeing a child, whose brother was burned, and whose parents are fighting for their lives. It is difficult to see that there are those within my people capable of such acts. The shame is great, though the pain is greater. It must be understood by both sides that terror cannot be allowed in our region. It is not enough simply to talk about the need to fight terror – we need to fight terror.”

“I spoke with the members of the family who told me of the good relationship of the father and mother, now fighting for their lives, with their Jewish neighbors. We stand before them, and must explain that such terror is not our path, it is not your path, it is not the path of the State of Israel, or of the Jewish people. Words alone will not suffice,” he adds.