Israelis injured in New Orleans attack ID’d as reservists vacationing after battling Hamas, Hezbollah

The pair of friends had gone traveling to “clear their heads” and have fun in the U.S.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The two Israelis who were injured in the New Orleans terror attack last week were a pair of reservists who had battled Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists for most of the war and had gone on a trip afterward to “clear their heads,” The New York Post reported Saturday.

Israel’s consul general the Southwest United States, Elad Shoshan told the paper that the pair were “best friends” in their mid-to-late twenties who had served for over a year and were traveling for fun after their stressful service.

“They came here to relax, to travel. Now that interrupted in the most horrific way,” Shoshan said, calling it a “tragic irony” that they had been hurt on holiday and not while doing battle.

“They left the terror of one country and never expected to be victims of it in another,” he told the paper.

One is still in serious condition, having suffered head trauma that has already required two “life-saving” operations, the consul general said. He will need more surgeries for other injuries as well.

“He’s in severe pain all over his body,” said Shoshan, who flew to the hospital from his base in Houston, Texas to offer any official help he could immediately after it became known that Israelis had been hurt.

The second man is in moderate but stable condition, having undergone two operations for internal injuries.

Shoshan described how the man emotionally said the Shema prayer for his critically injured friend’s full recovery.

New Orleans had been the reservists’ second to-last stop of their six-week visit before returning to Israel.

Their families, who flew from Israel to be at their sides, prefer that their names be withheld at this time.

They are being warmly supported by the local Jewish community, which is some 12,000 strong.

“The road ahead will be challenging, but we remain optimistic and remain hopeful for their speedy recovery,” the father of the severely injured Israeli told the paper.

The two men had been partying on the streets of the city’s historic French Quarter early Wednesday morning, celebrating New Year’s Eve along with hundreds of others when Texan Shamsud-Din Jabbar rammed a rented pick-up truck into the revelers.

He then got out and started shooting people, murdering 14 and injuring some 30 others in total, including at least two police officers, before being killed by their colleagues.

An FBI investigation found that the former IT specialist for the American army, who served for almost a year in Afghanistan, had booked the truck rental in mid-November, suggesting that he had been planning the attack for at least six weeks.

On Friday, the federal agency said that two improvised explosive devices had also been planted in coolers in the area of the historic French Quarter where the ramming took place, and the transmitter to detonate them were found in Jabbar’s truck.

Bomb-making materials were also found in the nearby Airbnb home he had rented and had tried to burn down unsuccessfully before setting out on his killing spree.

Jabbar had posted videos online saying that he had joined the ISIS terror organization, and during a search of his Houston home, the authorities found a Quran open to a verse about martyrdom.

Shoshan said that Israel and the U.S. are fighting “the same ideology, the same enemy,” equating ISIS with Hamas, both of which are Muslim extremist groups, as the IDF continues to battle Hamas after its terrorists led an invasion and massacre of 1,200 last October 7.

car ramming attackIDF reservistsISISNew OrleansShamsud-Din JabbarTerror Attack