Hey, everybody. This is Heidi St. John. Welcome to the Heidi St. John podcast. I'm glad you're joining me here at the intersection of faith and culture.

Today, I am honored to have David Rubin on the show. He has an incredible story of heroism. He and his son survived a terrorist attack in Shiloh, Israel.

And he has a powerful story of not only surviving that attack, but going on to thrive and making a difference. Stick around. I think you're going to be encouraged.

All right. So David, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for coming. Well, thank you, Heidi. It's good to see you again. It's a delight to have you here. I want to jump right into this because there's so many things happening on the world stage right now that people are overwhelmed about. You have a particular interest obviously in what's happening in Israel and what we can learn as United States citizens from what's happening in Israel. But I wanted to

take our listeners back to your story and how you got so active and how founded the Children's Fund. Can you take his back to a terror attack that you and your child were involved in? Sure. Sure. Well, we're going back about 20 years and and I was

coming back from Jerusalem. I had my three-year-old son sitting behind me in the baby seat on our way back to Shiloh or Shiloh as Americans would call it. So you're in a car? I was driving my car. Wow. Okay.

Halfway home suddenly the car is ambushed by Palestinian terrorists who were on the side of the road with AK-47 assault rifles. The car went completely dead when the bullets hit.

And I got shot in the leg. Blood was flying all over the place. And my son was motionless. I turned around to him. And I could see that he was breathing and possibly trying to scream a cry by no sounds were coming out.

I realized I better start the car and get away from the terrorists. And I turned the ignition. I tried over and over and suddenly the car started. Wow.

It started as if it had never had a problem starting before and I hit the gas. I drove 110 miles an hour to get to the ambulance off the road in the community up the road hoping I could get an available ambulance.

And they got to work on us. They discovered that my son had been shot in the head that a bullet had gone through his head and through his neck and missing his brain stem by one millimeter.

Did it exit the bullet enter and exit or was it lodged? Yes. No, it entered and there were a couple of remnants but they got them out eventually. And we survived.

That's to make a long story short. We survived. We were both alive and well today physically. My son had his emotional trauma issues over the years.

But we survived. And after that attack, I had this understanding seeing the emotional trauma that he was going through and seeing the emotional trauma that so many of his friends and other people, other children were going through.

That's something needed to be done about the trauma of the terror victim children. And that's what led me to start the Shiloh Israel Children's Fund.

And there was this vision I had. I had a vision of combining therapy with education to heal the trauma of the terror victim children in Israel.

That's what led to the Shiloh Israel Children's Fund. So we used music and art and small animals and horseback riding therapy and multi sensory safe room therapy and art therapy music therapy all under one roof, one figurative roof.

And it's just amazing. We've healed thousands of children through our programs. Well, sadly, I think there are going to be programs like this necessary now in the United States.

We're watching school shootings in particular violence has escalated in the United States as we're watching. We've removed the Judeo Christian foundations of this nation. And as that is happening, chaos is filling the back.

You are you are hitting it on the head and you're actually leading into the other topic you asked me to speak about, which is my new book confronting radicals, what America to learn from Israel.

You know, I actually wear two hats. One is the Shiloh Israel Children's Fund for the terror victim children. And the other is the writing of books about Israel about the United States and about Judeo Christian civilization and the bonds between our two countries.

And I think it's very important to focus on that. I believe very strongly that that well, I'll tell you what confronting radicals, what America to learn from Israel is about.

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