Crown Heights Bochur Shot in the Back in Jerusalem Attack

By COLlive reporter

Menachem Palace, a single Lubavitcher man from Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood, was in good spirits when he appeared for an interview with Israel’s N12 news channel on television on Sunday morning.

Especially since he had been shot just hours earlier.

Wearing a hospital gown and standing outside the Shaarei Tzedek hospital in Jerusalem, Palace recounted the horrifying moments when he and fellow Jews were injured in a terror attack.

An Arab resident opened fire on a bus near the Old City and injured 8 passengers, among them a pregnant woman. Two of them are in critical danger. A doctor performed an emergency delivery for the baby, who is now in critical but stable condition.

“I went to the Kotel and then went on bus #3, sitting near the window,” Palace recalled. “Two-three minutes afterward, I heard shooting. The windows broke, and I immediately lay down on the floor. People around me were screaming Shema Yisroel. It was really scary.”

When paramedics arrived, Palace said he was injured because he saw blood and was taken with an ambulance. Only after he arrived at the hospital did he learn that he had a bullet in his back.

“I didn’t feel anything,” he said. “Maybe it was the adrenaline. But they took an x-ray and saw there was a bullet. They performed minor surgery and Baruch Hashem everything is good. It was really a miracle.”

Palace is currently visiting the Holy Land with a New York group organized by Birthright-Taglit. He boarded the bus with a friend.

“He was right near me and nothing happened to him because I was by the window and it hit me,” he said.

When the anchor Niv Raskin asked if he planned to end his trip and return to the U.S., Palace made it clear that was not his intention.

“The trip ends on Thursday and I plan to stay,” he said. “This is our land – the safest place in the world.”

Raskin was impressed and complemented Palace on his upbeat attitude. “Maybe you’ll find a shidduch through this,” he joked.

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