Yeshurun and Dikla Gavish, recounting the thwarting of stabbing attack by a female Palestinian terrorist. Photo: nrg/Screenshot.

An Israeli who thwarted a terrorist attack on Wednesday afternoon overpowered a terrorist in 2006, after losing his parents, brother and grandfather in a terrorist attack in 2002, the Hebrew news site nrg reported.

Yeshurun Gavish, a resident of Kedumim, a settlement in Samaria (the West Bank), was in the middle of the circumcision ceremony of his new-born nephew, when his wife, Dikla – who had left the premises to get something from her house a few doors away – phoned to tell him (and security forces) that there was a female terrorist outside with a knife.

According to nrg, Gavish ran home, where Dikla had locked herself in the bathroom, and he assisted three IDF soldiers and the settlement’s security guard in neutralizing the woman.

“It evoked pictures in my mind of what happened to the Gavish family back then,” Dikla told nrg, referring to the March 28, 2002 Hamas massacre, which left her husband’s parents, Rachel and David Gavish, both 50, his brother Avraham Gavish, 20, and maternal grandfather Yitzhak Kanner, 83, dead.

During this attack, according to reports from that period, a Hamas terrorist infiltrated the Gavish family home in Elon Moreh in Samaria and opened fire. The terrorist was shot and killed by neighbors who arrived on the scene. The remaining six children, aged 15-22 – among them Yeshurun and the sister whose baby’s circumcision was taking place on Wednesday – escaped out of a second-story window.

Four years later, Yeshurun would come to the rescue of victims of a Palestinian stabbing attack on passengers in a shuttle taxi in Petah Tikva. Hearing screams from victims, Yeshurun ran to the scene and saw the terrorist fleeing and stabbing other people along the way. A passerby managed to hit the assailant with a board, which halted his spree long enough for Yeshurun to draw his gun, punch the perpetrator, take his knife away and wait for police to arrive.

This event took place mere days before Yeshurun and his siblings won a civil law suit against Hamas, filed by Shurat HaDin-The Israel Law Center, headed by attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, whose advocacy focuses on combating terrorism internationally through “lawfare.”

According to Israel National News, a Jerusalem court ruled that Hamas – which had just won the Palestinian elections and taken control of Gaza — had to pay NIS 90 million ($20 million) to the Gavish children. Though Darshan-Leitner said at the time that she didn’t expect the terrorist organization to actually honor the ruling, Shurat HaDin released a statement expressing its satisfaction with the precedent: “The court’s decision sought to punish Hamas for the murders and provide some measure of compensation for the surviving family members,” it read. “It is the first time that Hamas has been successfully sued in an Israeli court.”

Yeshurun’s wife, Dikla, concluded by telling nrg that she “feels a sense of power. We were granted the privilege of circumcising another member of the Gavish family. My dear sister-in-law, Leah, who experienced a very serious terrorist attack, [survived] to welcome another child into the world [whom she named after her slain brother, Avraham]… This moment is very characteristic of the family. While the Arabs are busy trying to destroy us, we are busy moving forward, being happy and, of course, having children.”