Sarri Singer: She Moved to Israel After 9/11. Then Her Bus Exploded.
October 17, 2026
AI Summary
5 min readShe Moved to Israel After 9/11. Then Her Bus Exploded.
On June 11, 2003, Sarri Singer was standing on a crowded Jerusalem bus, exhausted after a day of meetings, when she spotted two women vacating seats near the front. She normally would have taken the aisle seat so she could get up for elderly passengers, but for reasons she still cannot explain, she slid into the window seat instead. Minutes later, a Hamas bomber detonated himself two people away from her. The girl beside her and her boyfriend did not survive. Neither did the row in front. Seventeen people were murdered, over a hundred were injured, and Singer was pulled through the blown-out floor of the bus by strangers who heard her screaming. "If I didn't take that window seat," she says, "I wouldn't be here."
From 9/11 to the Second Intifada
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:38) **9/11 and the Decision to Move to Israel** - Sarri Singer describes how oversleeping on 9/11 kept her two blocks from the World Trade Center, and how the trauma of that day led her to quit her job and move to Israel to volunteer with terror victims.
- 2 (05:31) **Building a Life in Jerusalem** - Sarri describes settling into life in Israel, volunteering with terror victims, and the decision to stay permanently.
- 3 (07:48) **The Day of the Bus Bombing** - Sarri provides a detailed, minute-by-minute account of June 2003, when a Hamas bomber detonated on her Jerusalem bus, killing 17 people.
- 4 (14:42) **The Moment of Impact and Rescue** - Sarri describes the physical and sensory experience of the explosion and the immediate aftermath.
- 5 (17:38) **In the Hospital and Realizing the Magnitude** - Sarri describes the extent of her injuries, the realization it was a terrorist attack, and the responsibility she felt for surviving.
- 6 (23:36) **The Kindness of Strangers and Survivor's Guilt** - Sarri recounts the profound compassion she received from other victims in the hospital and her later struggle with survivor's guilt.
- 7 (33:56) **A Deliberate Return to Israel** - Sarri describes her determination to overcome fear and return to Israel just months after the attack.
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Show Notes
On the morning of 9/11, Sarri Singer overslept two blocks from the World Trade Center. Months later she moved to Israel to help terror victims. Then in June 2003, a Hamas suicide bomber detonated on her Jerusalem bus, murdering 17 people and wounding more than 100. Sarri survived, went back, and built more than anyone could imagine....
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