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Ambassador Yechiel Leiter's son critically hurt in ramming attack: 'Neria needs a miracle'

Israel’s Ambassador to the US Says His Son ‘Needs a Miracle’ After Checkpoint Ramming Attack

by
M.A. Rothman

By M.A. RothmanSeptember 23, 2026 · 5 min read
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Neria Leiter, an Israel Defense Forces reservist and the son of Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, was critically wounded on Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2026, when a Palestinian driver rammed a joint police and military patrol at the Maccabim checkpoint on Route 443. Within hours his father, who cut short a trip to the United Nations General Assembly in New York to return to his son’s side, put the family’s situation in four words: “Neria needs a miracle.”

For the Leiter family, this is the second time terror has come for one of their sons. The ambassador’s oldest son, Maj. (res.) Moshe Yedidya Leiter, was killed in northern Gaza in November 2023. His younger brother kept putting on the uniform anyway.

What happened at the checkpoint

According to the initial investigation reported by Ynet, the attacker was driving on a road used by Palestinian traffic when he veered, accelerated and tried to hit a police officer and another member of the patrol crew who were standing outside their vehicle. He struck Leiter. Israeli police said “a terrorist drove his vehicle toward a police patrol car from the Judea and Samaria District,” seriously wounding a member of the crew. The vehicle, Ynet reported, had earlier been ordered off the road.

A soldier at the checkpoint moved to stop him, and the driver tried to run him down too. Israeli troops opened fire and killed the attacker. The Jerusalem Post reported that the car carried a stolen Israeli license plate and that the patrol was a Judea and Samaria District police crew operating jointly with the army.

The attacker was identified as 29-year-old Muhammad Mahmoud Suleiman of Beit Ur al-Tahta, a village west of Ramallah. (Outlets have transliterated the name in several ways, including Mahmoud Sliman.) Citing the public broadcaster KAN, the Jerusalem Post reported that he appears to have acted alone, knew the area well and had no known record of prior security offenses. The IDF and the Shin Bet questioned his family.

Fighting for his life

Magen David Adom said Leiter was unconscious when he was treated at the scene. He was evacuated to Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem. The hospital said he received “lifesaving treatment in the trauma room” and was sedated and placed on a ventilator. He then underwent hours of brain surgery. Afterward, the hospital said his “condition remains very serious, and his life is in danger.” Leiter is an American citizen as well as an Israeli reservist.

His father wrote on X that he was grateful “to the IDF, to the medical team at Shaare Zedek who are now fighting to save the life of Neria Dov ben Chana,” and to everyone praying for him. He added, writing as a father as much as a diplomat: “I believe in the power of prayer, and I believe that when the people of Israel unite, miracles happen.”

He also named what his son had run into: “Palestinian terrorism seeks to uproot the people of Israel from their land. They choose death – we choose life.”

A family that keeps serving

Moshe Yedidya Leiter was 39 when he was killed on Nov. 10, 2023, along with three other reservists, when a booby-trapped tunnel shaft exploded in the Beit Hanoun area of northern Gaza. Jewish Insider reported that he was a father of six, a reserve company commander and a paramedic who was studying medicine and was about to start a hospital placement.

After that loss, Neria did not step back. According to his father, he has served hundreds of days in the reserves on several fronts since Oct. 7. He was on duty at a checkpoint, protecting the roads that Israelis drive every day, when the car hit him.

That is the reality the “occupation” vocabulary hides. Route 443 is a main artery between the Jerusalem area and the coastal plain. The men at its checkpoints are there because terrorists keep trying to turn cars, knives and rifles into weapons against the people who use it.

The response

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote that he and his wife, Sara, “together with all the people of Israel, are praying for a miracle,” adding: “Yechiel, my dear, we are all with you.” The ambassador, who returned to Israel from the United States, will not be at Netanyahu’s side at the General Assembly in New York, the Jerusalem Post reported.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said he stands with the Leiter family. Defense Minister Israel Katz praised the troops who killed the attacker and, according to The Daily Wire, vowed: “We will not allow terror to rear its head.” President Isaac Herzog urged the public to pray for the family, and Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, called the attack heinous.

The attack came amid a wave of violence in Judea and Samaria. Three days earlier, Netanel Shukrun, 48, of Alei Zahav, was shot dead at the Ein Raya spring in the Binyamin area; his 16-year-old son escaped after his father shouted a warning. The IDF said it was deploying additional forces, including the headquarters of its 98th Division, which Ynet reported would take command of the Etzion Brigade in the southern West Bank, a step military officials said had not been taken in the area in recent years.

Why it matters

Every time Israel tightens security in Judea and Samaria, it is lectured about checkpoints and roadblocks. This attack is the answer to that lecture. A man in a car with a stolen plate aimed it at a patrol, hit a reservist, then tried to hit a second soldier. The checkpoint did not cause the attack. It is the reason someone was there to stop it.

And the target this time was the son of the man who represents Israel to its most important ally, a family that has already given one son to the war Hamas started on Oct. 7. The ambassador is asking for prayer. Americans who stand with Israel can give him that, and they can refuse to let anyone call this anything but what it is: terrorism.

One Leiter son is already buried, another is fighting for his life, and the family’s answer to terror is still the same: they choose life.

Sources

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