When 26-year-old Adi Jegna first noticed the white bag on one of the seats at the back of her city bus in the Tel Aviv suburb of Bat Yam on the way home from work Thursday evening, something didn’t feel right. So she got up and took a closer look.
Inside the bag, she saw rolls of toilet paper and a container with some yellowish liquid.
“Frankly speaking, I debated whether I should say anything,” she recounted to JNS on Sunday.
However, Jegna moved the bag a bit and saw some lettering in Arabic. “Then I understood I could not ignore it,” she said.
Still worried she was overreacting, she said that she walked up to the bus driver as her stop was approaching and told him that there was a suspicious bag towards the back of the bus. Though the bus was almost at the end of its route, there were still some other passengers aboard.
The driver immediately contacted his superiors, who instructed him to head straight to the nearby bus depot while the police bomb squad was alerted. No sooner had he gotten off the bus himself than a massive explosion ripped through it.
Jegna heard the blast from her home but didn’t immediately connect it to her warning.
It was only when a friend texted her that there had been a bus bombing and that someone had alerted the driver to a suspicious object that she realized what had happened.
“I felt incredible,” she told JNS. “I felt that I was the messenger from God to save many people.”
Soon, the enormity of the thwarted attack became clear: Two additional blasts went off prematurely on other city buses (both empty)—one in Bat Yam and one in the nearby city of Holon. Security forces subsequently found that an additional bus had been rigged with explosives.
One of the bombs reportedly bore an Arabic message referencing the Palestinian city of Tulkarem which, along with Jenin, has been a hotbed of terrorism. Israeli forces have been carrying out a comprehensive counter-terrorism operation in the area where the two cities are located, for weeks.
For older Israelis, the images of the demolished bus just south of Tel Aviv brought back memories of the lethal bus bombings of the late 1990s and early 2000s.
While Jegna is too young to remember that time, she has given Israelis a poignant reminder of the importance of speaking out when they see something amiss.
“When I saw the pictures of my destroyed bus, I realized the extent of the disaster that was averted,” she said. “Really, thank God, I was a good messenger.”
As word spread of her action, Israelis heaped praise on the young woman for her alertness and quick thinking. While Jegna is appreciative of the thanks, she insists that she is no hero and just encourages everyone to be alert.
As for future commutes, Jegna is still riding the buses, including this week. “I have no other choice as I go to work,” she said. “I’m simply more careful.”
