The gray SUV accelerated and crossed the intersection at high speed pointed towards the Mercaz Clal building. Bodies flew in several directions as the car slammed into pedestrians, then into the building where a crowd stood. From a few yards away, we heard a boom and the sound of crunching metal. For a second the car was airborne as it bounced backwards. Dust and debris filled the air. Then the SUV backed up. There was a man stretched out on the hood. A stranger. He wasn't moving. I was sure he was dead. Only years later would I learn his name was Benjamin[1] and discover he had survived after multiple surgeries to six crushed organs.
My wife Joanna, a law professor, told me in April 2023 she had been invited to lecture Israeli law students at Tel Aviv University. She asked me to join her. I told her this was not the time to go because there had been multiple terror attacks in the first few months of the year and a riot on the Temple Mount. I interviewed dozens of terror victims in Israel during the Second Intifada. And I was part of a team representing them in US courts since 2004. Some were teenagers, including one who had lost an arm and one who was severely burned over most of his body. In the early morning hours of April 30, 2003, they had both survived the bombing of Mike's Place, a bar on the beach in Tel Aviv. I had also investigated the role of Arab Bank in financing the Second Intifada, including multiple meetings with Israeli officials and intelligence services supporting our case. I was giving Joanna sound advice based on lived experience. But she was insistent. I was not going to let her go alone.
My connections to Israel did not begin with the representation of terror victims. In 1989 I was living in Washington, DC, where I met a lawyer turned legal recruiter named Yoram Cohen. He convinced me to move my legal practice from Arnold & Porter to Howrey and Simon. A few years later, he convinced me to move again. Listening to his advice brought significant financial success. Along the way, we developed an extraordinary friendship that changed the course of my life. He became not only my best friend, business advisor, and confidante, but also my brother, the one person I could completely trust in my life. After a few years, he insisted I go to Israel to meet his parents. They welcomed me like a son, and over the years I met them several times when they came to the US for Cohen family events and holidays.
As a result of my legal work on terrorism cases and my growing list of friends in Israel and the Jewish community in DC, I visited Israel many times and fell in love with the country. When it became clear I was going to Israel again, this time with Joanna, I was excited to share it with her. This was Joanna's first trip. Because of my concerns about security and wanting Joanna to see as much of the country as possible on this trip, I found an experienced guide, Yonatan Shapira ("Yoni")[2], and planned several days that would take us to Jerusalem, the Dead Sea, the Lebanese border, the West Bank, and back along the Mediterranean coast. Yoni lived in a settlement in the West Bank and had extensive military training and combat experience. He was also a trained medic. He served in the IDF for several years, and he had a reputation for shooting out the kneecaps of those who were shooting at him, wounding rather than killing. He was also licensed to carry a firearm. I was convinced he was a well-trained soldier and was glad he was armed. Yoni shared many stories with us about his combat experiences, including the PTSD from which he still suffered. On our first day in country, Joanna lectured to her students while Yoni and I visited multiple museums. On the second day, the three of us headed to Jerusalem. Yoni arrived in his black Mercedes SUV and opened the back hatch of the Mercedes to load our bags and gear. We both saw the handgun tucked in the back of his pants. We felt a little safer.
We arrived in the Old City, where our first stop was the Temple Mount and its tunnels. I recalled my first visit to Jerusalem in the mid-1990s, when I came to the Temple Mount with Yoram. I remembered him telling me about all the bombings and attacks. The buses full of civilians blown to bits, groups of young soldiers murdered on street corners, in all around 170 to 200 deaths, and more than 1,400 civilians and 1,700 Israeli soldiers wounded. Yoram always seemed on guard as we walked the streets and drove across the country. My memories of that trip were still vivid. After a few days in Tel Aviv with Yoram's parents, we drove to Jerusalem in the early evening.
We had just checked into the King David Hotel when Yoram burst into my room and said, "Let's go. There was a terrorist attack at a restaurant in Tel Aviv. We are going back."
"Why would we do that? I don't want to see this," I replied.
"You need to see this. I want you to understand what we are living through here."
We ran to the car and drove back to Tel Aviv at high speed. The restaurant was the Café Apropo on Ben-Gurion Boulevard, a few hundred meters from Rabin Square. We had just walked through the Square earlier that same day talking about the assassination as we walked. Now in front of the restaurant, a crowd had gathered. Three young women had been killed by a suicide bomber, one with an infant who survived. Forty-eight others were injured. By the time we arrived, all the bodies had been removed and the injured evacuated. The structure of the building collapsed, and there wasn't much more to see than rubble. The crowd in the street was understandably angry and shocked. We stayed for a while to learn how the bombing had happened and to listen to the discussions among the crowd. We drove back to the King David, but I didn't sleep much that night. A week later after driving the borders of Israel, we returned to the Café Apropo for dinner. It had been rebuilt in a few days and was packed full of people. I was astonished. Every table in the restaurant was full. I asked Yoram how the restaurant had been rebuilt as new in a few days and how it managed to attract so many customers right after a terrorist suicide bombing.
Yoram said to me, "They can keep bombing and killing us and we will keep erasing the scars. We are never leaving, that is the message we are sending."
Now years later, because of the multiple terror attacks in just the few months before we arrived, I was on edge during this first afternoon with Joanna and Yoni. As we toured the Old City, I walked behind Joanna through the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim quarters while she listened to Yoni's commentary. I didn't take my eyes off her for a second. Fueled by adrenalin, I was on high alert, my head on a swivel, trying to watch both everyone in front and behind us, especially in the tight and crowded spaces of the markets along the Via Dolorosa. By the end of the day, I was exhausted.
On the next day, Monday, 24 April 2023, a date I will never forget, we made our way early in the morning with Yoni to Yad Vashem, the Memorial in Jerusalem to victims of the Holocaust. This was my second time at Yad Vashem. When we arrived, the air was crisp and the sky was a cloudless bright blue. We took our time and spent three hours touring the Memorial and the grounds. As we moved through the halls and exhibits, we came upon the Hall of Names with 600 portraits, representing the six million Jews who were murdered. Seeing this wall of victims filled me with anger and then sorrow and grief. Among the portraits I noticed one girl whose face I couldn't let go of. The look of despair and sorrow was heartbreaking. I researched her story after we came home. I still think about her and the other faces on that wall, some whose stories were saved and others whose stories were lost to history. As we came to the last part of the exhibits, I saw the shoes of children in a large pile. These had been collected by the Nazis before sending victims to the gas chambers. It was overwhelming, and as disturbing as the first time I had seen them. Before leaving we visited the bookstore. I bought four books on the Holocaust, hoping I might better understand the madness.
To recover from the weight of Yad Vashem, Yoni recommended we explore the Mahane Yehuda market for lunch. It had been there since the last days of the Ottoman Empire. The market had survived wars, intifadas, and three suicide bombings that killed 22 people.
The attack about to take place was only a very short distance from the site of the Yom HaZikaron ceremony to honor fallen soldiers and civilian lives lost to terror. It is part of Memorial Day and was scheduled to start in just a few hours with a siren at 8:00 PM. When the siren sounds, everyone stops whatever they are doing, no matter where they are, to stand and honor the dead. Yoni mentioned one of those fallen soldiers was his brother. We were speechless for a few seconds. I looked at him and could see the pain in his face.
Yoni suggested a walking tour through the market to explore and sample dishes from the shops. On this day, the market was filled with people shopping ahead of the start of the holiday.
At our last stop, we found baklava and grabbed a table nearby to relax and enjoy our treats. Sitting there, I recall thinking about how much life and joy there is in simple things. And I remembered Yoram telling me something years ago at the end of my first trip to Israel I have never forgotten. We were on the balcony of the Hilton Hotel on the beach in Tel Aviv. It was dusk. In the distance I saw fireworks. I asked him what it might be. He told me it was probably a wedding ceremony at a nearby synagogue.
"Why the fireworks? That seems a little over the top," I said.
He looked at me with a smile and said, "Give them any reason to celebrate." After spending almost two weeks with Yoram driving across Israel and listening to his lectures and stories, and spending hours with his mother, herself a survivor of Auschwitz, I thought I understood what he meant.
After lunch in the market, we headed back to the parking lot. I climbed into the front passenger seat. Joanna climbed in the back and sat in the middle of the seat from where she could see through the front glass and film with her phone. Yoni was driving and made a right turn onto Agrippas Street and headed towards the intersection with Kiach Street.
After the turn, Yoni accelerated and approached the intersection in a few seconds. Fifteen feet from the intersection, both of us, sitting in the front seats, saw the car roar in front of us at high speed, pointed directly at the crowd of people standing on the corner and next to the building on our right. We heard it slam into the building. Benjamin's body was draped across the hood of the car. He was wearing blue jeans and a teeshirt the force of the ramming had pushed up around his midsection.
"It's a terrorist attack," I said in shock as we were five to ten yards from the terrorist's vehicle.
Yoni's Mercedes came to a hard stop. He opened the door and ran at full speed toward the gray SUV while it was still moving in reverse. It seemed like he had been teleported instantly to the passenger side of the car. Time slowed. In the back seat, Joanna was screaming, but the words weren't registering. My eyes were fixed on Yoni and Benjamin, his face buried in the metal of the hood, his torso hanging over the front grill and bumper like a child's rag doll. Others had been crossing the street when the SUV hit them and were lying on the sidewalk and pavement. The intersection was filled with chaos and screams. A young woman lay in the middle of the street, her limbs twisted and torn in surreal directions. It was hard to see and even harder to comprehend.
People ran towards the gray SUV from all directions. A few of them with long guns and pistols. Yoni was in a firing position from what looked like inches from the passenger side window. He was crouching, knees bent and arms straight, both hands on his pistol. The glass in the terrorist's car shattered. My thoughts were racing. I saw another person with a gun approaching the driver's side of the gray SUV, and thought is this another shooter trying to kill the terrorist? Is he going to accidentally shoot Yoni? The terrorist moved after Yoni fired and it looked like he might be reaching for something. I thought the terrorist might be trying to blow up the car. In seconds, Yoni moved to the driver side. I jumped out of the car thinking about what to do next.
Joanna yelled, "We have to get out of the car," and jumped out at the same time.
Racing through my mind were thoughts about bombs, guns, knives and hand grenades, all the different ways terrorists had killed innocent people for years. What if the gray SUV explodes? Is the terrorist dead yet, or does he have a finger on a bomb switch that's going to release all hellfire and metal? There could be another attack from behind us. Is there another gunman around? From which direction are they going to come at us? I heard another shot.
Joanna's eyes were wide, and she was gasping for air. She was screaming. "We need to run, we need to take cover."
In that second I thought she could die if I didn't get her out of there. I was so focused on Joanna's survival, I didn't have even a millisecond of fear. I only realized that later.
In that moment of the attack, I couldn't think about anything other than getting her to safety. It wasn't conscious; it was physical, a refusal to let any harm reach her. I would have died peacefully if something had happened to me. If something happened to her, I could not have survived.
I grabbed Joanna by the arm, afraid moving away from the Mercedes could put her in more danger. I tried to force her to the ground to protect her from any blast or bullets. After a few seconds, she violently pulled away from me and ran. I saw a concrete wall near the driveway of the parking lot we had just left. I told Joanna to get behind it and not move. I was still thinking about an attack from another possible shooter behind us. I wondered if Yoni was still alive. I wanted to run toward the scene of the attack to check on him. The street was filling with people. Sirens blared from all directions. People were running towards the intersection: uniformed police officers, soldiers with automatic rifles, and a Magen David Adom rescuer on an emergency medical motorbike with a cart attached.[3] At first, it was a few dozen people, but within a few minutes, security forces swarmed the intersection.
I again told Joanna to stay where she was behind the concrete wall. I ran back to check on Yoni, while constantly looking back to check on Joanna. It was chaos everywhere. Yoni was in the street checking on the wounded and maimed people. Heavily armed police and soldiers were blocking off the area. Yoni jumped into the Mercedes and moved it to the curb. Bystanders were pushing and shoving while security forces and soldiers were trying to clear the area. Yoni finally appeared a few feet away and told me to get our things from the car, go to the train, and get back to the hotel as fast as possible. Somehow, I brushed past someone trying to move me back, opened the passenger door of the Mercedes, grabbed my camera and Joanna's backpack from the rear seat. I forgot the four books on the Holocaust I had purchased that morning at the Yad Vashem bookstore. I ran back to Joanna.
"Let's go, let's go" I said.
We ran and then walked in the direction away from the scene of the attack. Only then did we begin to process the carnage we had seen. Yoni was alive. The terrorist must be dead. Benjamin on the hood was surely dead. How many mangled bodies were lying in the street? Are they alive? I wanted to get Joanna off the street and to safety, back to the hotel as quickly as possible. I opened Google Maps for directions back to the Mamila Hotel where we were staying near the King David. We ran up a flight of stairs to get to another street because ambulances and people were blocking the street in front of us. I saw a stretcher with a near-lifeless body on it; the rescue workers were moving at high speed and passed in front of us as we ran up the steps. It was Benjamin on the stretcher. A woman standing nearby asked Joanna something and Joanna paused to tell her there had been an attack.
"There was a ramming. We were there," she said.
We needed to get away. All I could think about was getting us to safety, off the streets, as far as possible from the unreal things we had just seen and experienced. I had never seen a murder, a car ramming, bodies flying, crushed and broken, twisted and torn. Screams for help. Blood flowing on the street. Bullets flying. I could not get us out of there fast enough. "Let's go now," I said loudly.
"We are from Ohio," the lady speaking to Joanna said. She was still talking when I pulled Joanna's arm and we ran up the stairs.
We argued momentarily on the way back to the hotel. I wanted to take the fastest and shortest route. Joanna wanted to stay off the main streets in case there was another attack. I could see she was terrified. "I just want to get you back alive," I said. That was enough, and we headed away from the scene of the attack. We found ourselves in an Orthodox neighborhood. Joanna was running at times and nearly stepped into the path of speeding traffic. She swore she saw a green light. From that moment, I held her tightly to get her across the street. Twenty to thirty minutes passed before we were back in our hotel room, drained, covered in sweat, and exhausted.
Harvey, our tour planner, called right after we returned to our hotel. He was on his way over to check on us after Yoni had called him. Yoni was being interviewed by the authorities. Harvey told us Yoni would call us when he finished. He called shortly thereafter, and we asked him to come by the next day. Harvey arrived, and the three of us had dinner on the rooftop of the Mamila. We had never met Harvey in person. He was kind, supportive, and understood we were still in shock. We were grateful to have someone to talk to about what had just happened. Harvey stayed for a couple of hours even though it was the Israeli Memorial Day holiday.
At 8:00 PM the siren sounded and everyone in the restaurant stood up at once. The sound was loud enough to be heard all over the city. Joanna and I were startled. She squeezed my hand. I choked up a bit and felt disoriented.
After dinner, Joanna spent several hours scouring the Internet to piece together the details of the attack. She found information on social media, news reports, and CCTV footage. She was looking for anything to help her understand the how and the why of the attack. I tried to dissuade her, wrongly thinking if I turned away from the facts it would be easier to forget and subconsciously ignore and pretend it wasn't going to have any impact on us. Later, I was glad she had collected as much information as she could find. We both took Ambien and went to bed exhausted. Joanna slept ten hours straight.
I woke up after three hours. I couldn't get the images of the body hanging off the front of the gray SUV out of my head. I lay awake reading everything Joanna had gathered. I read several newspaper accounts reporting the name of the terrorist. He was identified as 39-year-old Hatem Najma, a father of five young children from the Beit Safafa neighborhood in East Jerusalem.
The accounts I read at 3:00 AM suggested he had no terrorist connections. Later reporting complicated this picture. Hamas was swift to embrace the attack. A spokesman praised what he called a "heroic ramming operation," saying it came "as a response to the crimes of the occupation and the violation of the sanctity of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque." A father of five, orphaning his own children. Insane. I lay awake all night and crawled out of bed with the sunlight.
The next afternoon we met Yoni in the lobby and hugged him. I kissed his cheek in gratitude. I felt we might not have lived but for his actions. We sat at a table in the garden of the Happy Fish restaurant, ordered three large beers and talked about the sequence of events, what we saw and heard, and what felt like the insanity of it all, the taking of innocent lives, and the sorrow soon to appear on so many doorsteps. We discussed the role of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran, their belief systems and the dehumanization that keeps peace from ever becoming a reality. Yoni told us he was glad we understood he had no choice but to go straight at the attacker. I told Yoni we thought the attacker might have blown up the car and killed us and many others. Yoni shared details of what happened from his perspective. He saw the car moving backwards, and then it started to roll forward. He shot out the right front tire to stop the car. He didn't recall this until his interview with the authorities.
"I approached the passenger window and saw the driver. He didn't look at me. Thank God I didn't look in his eyes. That would have made it worse. I was processing everything to make sure the driver wasn't a drunk who had passed out behind the wheel. I had to decide in a few seconds. I was 99 percent sure the driver was a terrorist. He reached for something. Then I took the shot," he said.
The authorities later confirmed the attack was a deliberate attempt to kill people. Yoni first shot him four times in the chest. He then went to the other side of the car and saw the driver move his head. He fired a fifth shot from a downward angle into the head of the terrorist to avoid a bullet passing through and into someone else as other people were already fast approaching the gray SUV. Later, from CCTV footage I saw Yoni had stood on his tiptoes to shoot the driver through the top of his head. Thankfully, I didn't see this live, and the video footage did not capture the damage to the terrorist's face and head. Just seeing the camera footage and hearing the shooting was bad enough. He then went to check on each of the victims. Joanna downloaded all the videos from Twitter and the Internet. I saved them and sometimes still look at them to remind myself of how lucky we are to be alive.
Then we talked about how to deal with the things we had seen and would never forget. Joanna sobbed and said she just wanted to go home. We discussed returning home immediately and shortening our trip. Yoni told us there was no shame in that, but also we were not victims. I knew we were not victims. We were still alive. Benjamin was a victim. The young woman with twisted limbs was a victim. The people on the sidewalk and pavement were victims. Najma's five orphaned children were victims of a different kind. We walked away physically uninjured. After years of listening to horrific stories from my clients who were truly victims, I understood this. It was one thing to see the aftermath of the bombing at Café Apropo years earlier, to see the impact of bombing attacks on my clients who had survived terror attacks, but to experience a terror attack up close and witness death and destruction from a few feet away was something very different.
"Don't leave in fear. But go home and deal with the trauma and process what happened," Yoni said.
I wanted to stay and encouraged Joanna to think about what she wanted to do, to sleep on it before we decided. I felt strongly about not leaving Israel and about staying to finish the trip for several reasons. But I also understood our obligation to bear witness and knew one day I had to tell this story. I thought it would be best for our emotional health to stay and process what we had experienced. Joanna was insistent and did not want to stay. She knew she would not be able to continue her teaching right after this experience.
We returned home, and the real trauma sank deeply into my psyche for many months. I found myself taking naps on the sofa to avoid thinking about the attack. I couldn't keep up with my work obligations. We both had trouble sleeping for many weeks. My dreams were filled with gore, limbs being torn off and flying across the room. I kept seeing Benjamin on the hood of the car. I couldn't focus on work or find a way to get these horrific images out of my head. We tried to process our experiences of the attack in different ways. We shared a few sessions with a trauma therapist and then split off so we each had our own therapist. Mine suggested I write to clear my mind. I took pages of notes to remember the facts and how I felt. I didn't look at them again until October 7, 2023, when I was reeling from the horror of the massacre. I had never shared the notes with anyone, not even Joanna.
In June we returned to Israel. Joanna had been invited to co-chair a conference at Tel Aviv University. She agreed to go, and again I went with her. At first, I did not want to go back but decided we should return and finish the trip the terrorist cut short. Although I was still processing what we had seen in the Yehuda Market a few months earlier, it felt right to be there again.
During Joanna's conference, I took Yoni with me to visit Yoram's mother, something I had wanted to do on our earlier visit in April until we had witnessed the terror attack. Yoram died in March courageously after battling brain cancer for many years. This was only a month before we arrived in April, and I wanted to pay my respects to his mother. I felt an obligation to her and knew she must still be grieving at the loss of her son, just as I was still grieving at the loss of my friend who had been my anchor. Now I had another chance to see her. We went to her apartment near the sea Yoram had given her. She had a beautiful view and was sitting in her comfortable chair. She invited me to sit next to her. Yoram's sister stood nearby quietly listening. I told her how much I loved her son, and how we became brothers. I am not Jewish, but Yoram was my closest friend; he always called me his brother. She knew all this from Yoram, and it made her happy to hear it from me.
After we shared stories about Yoram, his love for family and his country, his courage in battle, his fearlessness and stoic perspective, and our shared sense of loss, I asked her to tell me the story of how she and her sister had survived Auschwitz. She told us her sister had died of starvation a few weeks after the liberation of the camp, and how she was the only survivor in her family. She described her many months at sea before being allowed by British authorities to disembark in Israel. She was sitting close to me. I could see her face and hands were relaxed. She told the story in a calm voice and was smiling. There was no anger or bitterness. I saw a powerful woman who had survived and was happy to be alive at ninety-six. Right after we left, Yoni and I talked about how astonishing it was to hear her survival story and see her extraordinary peace while telling it.
After Joanna's conference ended, we spent the next several days driving across Israel with Yoni to visit all the places we had intended to see in April. We talked about politics, the history of all the wars fought since May 14, 1948. As we were driving in the Golan along the border with Lebanon, Yoni pointed out areas where Israeli villages had been attacked for years. I asked him what his biggest concerns were for Israeli security. He said, "Hezbollah crossing the Lebanese border and taking large numbers of villagers hostage and massacring them." The scenario he described sounded horrific.
Two years after the war in Gaza began, I tried to reach Yoni a few times without hearing from him. I was concerned he might have been called up for combat in Gaza and wanted to know he was alive and well. He had indeed spent many months in Gaza. We talked about the Gaza war and then talked about the attack we experienced together in the market. I told him he was a hero on that day in the market. Yoni humbly said something to the effect that he was just doing what his training required.
I also told Yoni about the unexpected suffering, nightmares, sleeplessness, and depression waiting for me when I arrived home, and how I could never forget seeing Benjamin on the hood of the SUV. He told me he had gone to the hospital many times to check on the wounded. I asked what had happened to Benjamin, assuming he had died. Yoni told me Benjamin was rushed to a special trauma center for terror victims. He had multiple organs severely crushed. He had multiple surgeries, but he was alive and after six months left the hospital in a wheelchair.
"Thank God," I said. I felt enormous relief knowing he had miraculously survived the attack.
Near the end of our call, we talked about our visit with Yoram's mother. We both had the same memory of her calm, peaceful demeanor, and the smile on her face. She had spent two hours with us and astonished us with her love for life, her family, and her son Yoram, whom she had recently lost. Recently I called Yoram's family to check on her. She is still alive. She was interviewed and told her story on Israeli television. She lost her entire family in the Holocaust. Her husband had passed. She is living in a country constantly under attack and where any day could be her, or anyone else's, last day from a terror attack, a bomb, or a missile. And yet, she is full of joy and at peace.
Now I truly understood why Yoram had smiled at me almost 30 years earlier when he said, "Give them any reason to celebrate."
[1] Benjamin was not his real name. He deserves his privacy.
[2] Yoni is also a pseudonym. Naming him would unnecessarily put him and his family at risk.
[3] I didn't think about it in that moment but later recalled Yoram and his wife Margo had for years been major supporters of the Magen David Adom volunteer rescue workers. Having seen them in action at the attack scene, I had a new appreciation for the group.
