Efrat and Yaron Ungar lost their lives near Beit Shemesh coming home from a wedding on June 9, 1996. Their nine-month-old son miraculously survived. Now the Palestinian Authority has settled a federal lawsuit in Rhode Island over the shooting. The Ungars’ relatives sued in 2000 in Rhode Island, where the lawyer representing their estate is based, under a federal statute called the Anti-Terrorism Act, which allows the estates of US citizens killed by terrorist attacks overseas to recover damages.

It's a rare admission of guilt. 

I interviewed Efrat’s mother, Yehudit, for my recent book “A New Shoah. The Untold Story of Israel’s Victims of Terrorism”. Yaron was an idealist who had taught lessons on Judaism in Russia before finding work as a teacher in Hevron. Efrat came from a nearby town, Alon Shvut, where her parents still live today.

“I feel that my mission is to explain to the world that even though we have a big army, we are an intimidated people,” Efrat’s mother, Yehudit, says in the book. “My daughter’s case is typical. She was killed in her car, in her land, coming back from a wedding. Killed because she was a Jew. She had her child in the car and was carrying another in her womb”.

I interviewed many families in the settlements who have lost relatives under terror attacks. The Jewish settlements endured hundreds of deaths during the Second Intifada, with the days full of fear, the nights spent standing guard in the isolated houses, the sudden massacres of families, infants and unborn babies, the drives through darkened streets in helmets and bulletproof vests.

Many of these families are the protagonists of “A New Shoah”.

I spoke with Menashe Gavish, who lost his father, mother, brother and grandfather in a terror attack in Elon Moreh.

I spoke with David Hatuel, who lost everything in Gush Katif: his pregnant wife and four little daughters, but David is still heroically able to reveal what it means to be Jewish. There is something contagious about his compassion.

I spoke with Steve Bloomberg, who learned to live in a wheelchair along with his daughter, after the killing of his pregnant wife in Karnei Shomron.

I spoke with a special obstetrician, Tzofia Dickstein, who lost her father, a rabbi, her mother and her little brother, but today helps Arab women give birth.

The residents of Psagot calculated that 120,000 bullets were fired at the village within the first year of the Second Intifada. I spoke with Yitro Asheri, a Torah copyist who converted to Judaism and whose son was kidnapped and executed by the terrorists.

I spoke with Elisheva, whose family had been lost in Auschwitz, and whose daughter Yael was killed at ninth month of pregnancy in Carmei Tzur, a most isolated village in the Gush Etzion region, a collection of red-roofed houses on a barren hill of stones and brambles in the middle of the desert. In the same community lived doctor Shmuel Gillis, shot and killed while driving home, I spoke with the wife of this renowned scientist.

I spoke also with Yossi Apter, who lost his son Noam who locked himself in the kitchen of the yeshiva with the terrorists, blocking access to the dining hall and saving over a hundred lives.

I spoke with Norman Blaustein, who lost his wife Sara. Every Tuesday morning, Sara Blaustein went to the tomb of Rachel, the Jewish Blessed Mother, the protector of sanctified maternity.

I spoke with the wives of Aharon Gurov and Avraham Fish, who suffered under the Soviet antisemitism before being killed in the Judean desert.

I spoke with many of Hebron’s victims' families, the family of  Dina Horowitz, who was killed during the celebration of Shabbat; like Sarit Amrani, she was slaughetered nine days after the attack on the Twin Towers in New York;  and there was Rafael Yairi, a convert to Judaism who came from Holland. 

Newspapers and televisions in Europe and in the United States always boycotted the memories and the extraordinary stories of these innocent people, Jews killed simply because they were Jews. People in the West even ignore the amount of blood spilled in these communities. 

I felt that  I had to re-establish some truth about the real story of Israel. These people are not symbols of Jewish exploitation and imperialism as they are always described in the newspapers and books. Gavish, Dickstein, Hatuel, Horowitz, Gillis, for me these innocent victims are all saints and heroes. And those who survive them are the best humankind has to offer because they hold on to the value of life.