When Eden Dadon, now 16, and her mother, Racheli, got on the No. 12 bus from their home in Talpiot, located in the southern region of Jerusalem, they never anticipated the horrific event that would ensue.
It was 5:45 pm, the week before Passover, and the bus was crowded. They couldn't sit together. Eden went to the back and her mother took a seat closer to the front. They hadn't gone even one stop when a terrorist named Abed al-Hamid Abu Srour, 19, from a middle-class family near Bethlehem, set off a bomb. Abu Srour was a member of the West Bank Unit of Hamas. The bus caught on fire, as did two nearby vehicles.
Abu Srour was in the back of the bus, near Eden, when he detonated the bomb. Out of the 21 people injured, she was the most severely wounded, except for the terrorist who died shortly after the incident. Eden was rushed to Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem.
After initial treatment in the Swartz Center for Emergency Medicine trauma center, she was transferred to the Sarah Wetsman Davidson Hospital Tower intensive care unit. She was on life support for two weeks before staff began scaling back her medication. The joyful news spread first through the hospital and then throughout Israel: Eden woke up and she's communicating with her mother.
"She had complex burns over the upper and lower limbs, as well as her face," said Hadassah Plastic Surgeon Dr. Eyal Hassidim. “She was transferred to the Plastic Surgery Department in the SWD (Sarah Wetsman Davidson) Tower, where she received physiotherapy and occupational therapy for her joints. We hope for a full recovery with total movement."
On June 5, Eden was released from Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem to begin rehab. Her mother, Racheli, who suffered light injures during the attack, was also treated at Hadassah and remained by her daughter's side for the long hospitalization. Last week, Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, Inc., arranged to get her a bedside manicure.
"You gave us back the gift of her life,” said Racheli. "We can't thank you enough. Thank you, Hadassah."