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Activist Devorah Halberstam’s son, his family family trapped in Israel — dredging up awful memories of the past

It’s been almost 30 years since a terrorist’s bullets first tore Devorah Halberstam’s life asunder.

Back then — in the waning days of the winter of 1994 — her 16-year-old son, Ari Halberstam, was savagely murdered on the Brooklyn Bridge by Rashid Baz, a Lebanese-born man who fired into the van in which Ari was riding in with 15 other Orthodox Jewish students.

Decades later, her family has been engulfed by another shocking tragedy: Hamas’ barbarous weekend assault on Israel, which has left her other son and his family stranded in the Jewish state.

“They were there on vacation, and of course now they’re in and out of bomb shelters,” Halberstam told The Post. “It’s non-stop rockets that keep falling, and sirens keep going off.”

“It’s pretty frightening for them — but they’re keeping it together, as they must, for the young children,” she continued. “And I’m doing everything I can to get them home.”

It’s a terrifying turn for Halberstam, who threw herself into political activism after her eldest son’s murder. She was instrumental in passing the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2001, which she worked on alongside then-Gov. George Pataki, according to the FBI’s New York Division.

The Brooklyn native also pushed for changes in gun control laws, and her work led Pataki to appoint her to the state’s first terrorism commission in the years after 9/11.

She has also served as the chair of the NYPD’s Civilian Hate Crime Review Panel for more than a year.

But despite her efforts to fight the hatred and horror that terrorists seek to sow, it seems that she herself cannot escape its blackened claws.

Halberstam — who did not want to identify her son or give any particulars of the family’s whereabouts for fear it would make them a target — said the overseas ordeal has left her “frozen in time.”

“My children are there … so the world has stopped for me,” she said. “I haven’t slept, and I can’t peel my eyes off the news outlets. I’m paying very close attention to every detail of what is going on.”

“For me, it’s always been personal,” she added. “Right now, I’m in a state of great fear. I know that it really could happen — because it has happened. I’ve lived and breathed this day and night, and I’ve done everything I could to raise the awareness of it.”

But even for a veteran like Halberstam, Hamas’ attack — which ignited a war that’s already killed more than a thousand on each side — was stunning in its brutality.

“For me, it’s always been personal,” she added. “Right now, I’m in a state of great fear. I know that it really could happen — because it has happened. I’ve lived and breathed this day and night, and I’ve done everything I could to raise the awareness of it.”

“It’s quite astounding,” she said. “Bloodthirsty is being nice about it … How could any human being inflict anything like that on anybody? Let alone babies and women?”

But this war is teaching an important lesson, she said: That terrorism is alive and well, and the fires of hatred burn bright despite Western civilization’s efforts to snuff them out.

“Terrorism has never gone away,” she said. “It’s living and breathing and it’s here to stay. And we must never become complacent. It’s the enemy that we will have to fight forever.”

But that’s a battle for another day. Right now, Halberstam just wants her family home.

“I’m working on it,” she said. “And minute to minute, things do change — planes are going out, then it’s frozen, then there are rockets flying over the airports.”

“Hopefully I will see him back here very, very soon,” she continued. “I want to just be able to look at him, and touch him, and see my grandkids and my daughter-in-law. I want to see them all. They’re my life. They’re my living life.”

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