OUT OF THE SNARE: JERUSALEM'S CHRISTIAN ZIONIST VETERAN, PETRA HELDT

It has been more than 20 years since Petra Heldt was nearly killed by a suicide bomber, but she can still tell you the exact time the bomb went off. “One point sixteen in the afternoon. I know because my watch stopped,” she says. Then she laughs.

And that’s the thing. Her laugh. When Petra tells you about surviving a suicide bombing attack in Jerusalem’s Machane Yehuda Market on July 30, 1997, she laughs. She laughs with astonishment of having survived the attack and the kindness shown to her by friends and strangers on the day of the attack and in the years since. She laments the 16 people who were killed in the attack, but she has no room to obsess about the bombers who tried to kill her and drive her from the land. Instead, she focuses on the Israelis who saved her.

She laughs with astonishment when describing how a random taxi driver stopped her as she ran in the street away from the attack and pushed her broken and bloody body into the back seat of his car — without regard for the blood she was shedding on his upholstery. Read more...