The spokeswoman for the Neve Tzuf (Halamish) community where Friday night's barbaric terror attack took place, Miri Maoz-Ovadia, spoke with Arutz Sheva and said that it had been an "extremely traumatizing Shabbat for everyone here, and for all those who are following what happened."
"We have known difficult times, intifadas, terror attacks on the roads where residents were murdered, but never anything like this: a terrorist entering a house and butchering a family, so feelings are very hard."
It was your brother who neutralized the terrorist. Have you spoken to him since?
My brother and father heard the screaming and ran quickly, when they realized that it was a terror attack they ran back and brought their guns, my brother is well trained he shot one bullet and managed to neutralize the terrorist...it's a very hard feeling to be part of such an experience, the vision of what went on in the house afterwards, the victims, its all one very big traumatizing event, but he knows he did the right thing and he saved Michal[ Salomon, wife of terror victim Elad Salomon].
What's the next stage? How do you explain to children who have fears of who can come into their houses now?
On Shabbat we held various discussions about what to say to the children and we spoke with the youth at different levels. My oldest son is three, I thought I could keep him away from this, but then he told me he was going to bring the police and the dogs, so I realized he was aware of what happened and I told him the good guys need to beat the bad guys.
I understand that one of the ideas to respond is to continue to build here
This community has been going strong for 40 years, there are many second-generation and third-generation people who are waiting for houses. New neighborhoods are not being authorized, we deserve to expand our natural growth and even more so after this tragic awful event we want to focus on building and commemorating our neighbors who were murdered.
What are your security demands?
Our community is supposed to extend eastwards according to the building plans but there is a road which has been used from time to time by terrorists harming our community. In the arson 8 months ago[in which 15 houses were torched by Arabs] they threw Molotov cocktails from that road. We demand the road closed to Arab traffic and to allow us to build houses and restore our sense of security like anywhere else in Israel.