Canadian journalist Bronwyn Drainie describes the surprising behavior of a haredi woman—an ultra-orthodox Jew—at a Jerusalem street market. Drainie says:

The most heroic single act I heard of during my two years in Jerusalem involved a haredi woman. At the Mahane Yehuda one day, the Jewish street market just around the corner from my boys' school, an Arab terrorist drew a knife among the throng of shoppers and managed to stab two young men before fleeing for his life. The crowd of Israelis, incensed, began running after him, a number of them drawing pistols as they ran. The Arab darted across the street, running straight towards a haredi woman of 40 who was standing at a bus-stop. Her name was Bella Freund.

In a trice she sized up what was happening. She stepped directly into the Arab's path and tripped him so that he fell to the ground, and she threw herself on top of him to protect him. The crowd kicked her, spat on her, threatened her with their guns, but they could not loosen her hold on the Arab, and she lay there until the police arrived to take him into custody.

Later, when the reporters got to her, Bella Freund said: "It was very simple. If you can save a life, you do it." Her hatred of Arabs, her lifelong conditioning never to touch a man who wasn't her husband, all of it was set aside in a split-second of truth. "I could not see a helpless man killed by a mob, whatever he had done," she said. "That's not the way I was brought up."