Mother who lost her infant in terror attack vows to have ‘many more babies’
‘I will show them,’ Shira Ish-Ran says in first remarks since she was seriously injured in Ofra shooting; family says her condition improving
Michael Bachner is a news editor at The Times of Israel
Shira Ish-Ran, the pregnant woman who was severely wounded and lost her baby boy in a West Bank shooting attack earlier this week, vowed on Thursday to have “many more babies” in response to the terror attack.
The 21-year-old, who was 30 weeks pregnant at the time of the terror attack outside the Ofra settlement, was seriously wounded in the shooting, and doctors prematurely delivered the infant in an emergency C-section hours later. The baby died in a Jerusalem hospital on Wednesday.
On Thursday, after her condition improved further and a day after her four-day-old son was laid to rest, Ish-Ran was quoted by Hebrew-language media as saying, in her first remarks since the attack: “I will prove to them, I will show them. I will bring many more babies into this world. Am Yisrael chai.”
Shira’s father, Chaim Silberstein, said his daughter’s improved condition was a “sigh of relief” for him.
“There is still a long way to recovery, but we are thankful for every step and hope for the best,” he said.
Hundreds of mourners gathered at Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives cemetery Wednesday night for the funeral of the newborn, who had been pronounced dead by doctors at the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem after several days in intensive care.
Shira and her husband Amichai, who was also injured in Sunday’s attack, were recovering from gunshot wounds at the hospital and were unable to attend the funeral. Shortly before the burial, the baby underwent a symbolic circumcision and was named Amiad Yisrael.
Silberstein said his grandson’s funeral was “very difficult, especially when Shira and Amichai couldn’t attend and remained at the hospital. They had time in the premature babies ward to bid farewell to Amiad Yisrael, whom we never got to raise. We felt closure in being able to lay him to rest on the Mount of Olives.”
Silberstein also reacted to Thursday’s shooting attack at the Assaf Junction in the central West Bank, in which two IDF soldiers were killed, and a soldier and a civilian were critically wounded.
“They won’t deter us,” he said, calling on the government and security forces to deliver a powerful response to prevent similar terror attacks.
Some 300 people attended the baby’s funeral, which took place as Israeli forces raided a Palestinian village and killed one of the suspected perpetrators, Salih Barghouti, and arrested four other suspects in the terror attack, which left seven people injured.
Barely able to speak between sobs, grandfather Refael Ish-Ran said despite the baby boy’s short life, few people had “managed to unite the nation of Israel” like he had.
“You brought so much light. And with all the light that you brought, we will extinguish their darkness,” he said in his eulogy, adding that the name Amiad — which includes in it the Hebrew word for “eternal” — was chosen to signify that despite the baby’s death, “The nation of Israel will last forever.”
Jacob Magid and Alexander Fulbright contributed to this report.
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