Yehuda Shimon of Kfar Gilad was at the Tapuach Junction on Tuesday when a terrorist murdered a young Israeli father of five. He told Arutz Sheva what he saw.
“I was coming from the direction of my house, and I saw an Arab man break away from a group of Arab men standing south of the junction. He came toward the hitchhiking post and jumped on one of the people there, pressed against him, and was pushed back,” Shimon said.
“At that point I didn’t see what exactly was going on,” he continued. “I stopped my car. A few seconds later the Arab man started to go back to the point he came from, while shooting at an IDF position nearby. Soldiers shot back at him.”
“I got out of my car and the woman who was getting a ride with me crouched down beside the car, because we couldn’t tell if he was shooting at us or at the IDF post,” he said.
“I started to give first aid to the injured man. I turned him on his back, lifted his shirt, which was drenched in blood. I saw stab wounds and I tried to stop the blood until paramedics got there,” he recalled.
“When the paramedics got there I left the wounded man. Police arrived, too, and I pointed them in the direction the terrorist had gone,” he said. “Apparently the terrorist had been hit by the shots fired at him, he had fallen in the middle of the road with his gun about a meter away. He was still moving.”
“I went back to the wounded [Israeli] man and the paramedic told me he had died. I said the ‘Shema Yisrael’ and closed his eyes, and then the soldiers started arriving,” he said. The Shema Yisrael prayer is traditionally said twice daily, and in addition, in the moments before death.
Shimon concluded, “Unfortunately, we are already used to events like this. Two or three weeks ago they shot at an Israeli man standing at the hitchhiking post. Unfortunately, terrorism against Jews has been on the rise recently.”
The victim of Tuesday’s attack has been identified as 31-year-old Evyatar Borowsky, a father of five. Borowsky was a popular actor and a member of the Ar El troupe.