Ella Abukasis, 17, laid to rest (Teenage girl killed by Palestinian terror)

Jan. 21, 2005 12:35 | Updated Jan. 21, 2005 13:41
Ella Abukasis, 17, laid to rest
By JPOST.COM STAFF

Eleven-year-old Tamir Abuksis, wounded in a Kassam rocket attack on Sderot, sits with his father, Yonatan, in the hospital. His sister, Ella Ayala Chaya, was killed in the attack as she shielded her brother
Photo: Channel 2

Abukasis, 17, died at 9:00 a.m. at the Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba. She was critically wounded when a Kassam rocket exploded as she and her siblings were returning from a Bnei Akiva youth group meeting in Sderot on Saturday.

As medics fought to stabilize the girl, she was taken first to Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon and later brought to Soroka in Beersheba.

Her 11-year-old brother, Tamir, was also wounded in the attack, as shrapnel lodged in his head. He was spared a worse fate when his sister dove to protect him after hearing the warning siren.

"She protected him with her body, and now her blood stains are on his pillowcase. It was a miracle that he survived," Ella's father told Israel Radio.

According to the Jewish custom of adding names with positive connotations to seriously ill people, Ella became known as Ayala Chaya after the attack. "Chaya" means living.

Even after the doctors pronounced her brain dead Tuesday, the prayers continued outside her hospital room. There was a constant flow of visitors, both friends and family, as well as officials, like Sderot Mayor Eli Moyal.

Her father, Yonatan, spoke in an interview with Israel Radio on Friday morning. "The doctors said she was completely brain dead – there was nothing that could be done. And even though she was gone, she left her entire body, full. It just looked like she was sleeping. But she wasn't."

He said that once he understood from doctors that it was the end, he had to check into the halachic (Jewish legal) implications.

Yonatan said that at least his daughter merited that "the most prominent rabbis of our day decided when to return her soul." The family consulted with rabbis Mordechai Eliyahu, Shlomo Amar, Ovadia Yosef, and Elyashiv.

Yonatan told the radio that the rabbis did not give an approval to disconnect his daughter from the machines, but they accepted the advice of Rabbi Dr. Halperin, who said that in the case of brain death, the connection must remain while the heart is slowly let to die. When the medications in the machines run out, they are not replenished.

Ella's medications ran out Thursday afternoon. At 9:00 a.m. Friday morning she passed away.

Yonatan Abukasis said that he is maintaining his strength, for himself, and "for the family."

Ella's sister Karen said it was very difficult to deal with her sister's death. Since Ella was rushed to the hospital, she's felt that everything was gone.

Karen said her sister was "everything": She liked to help and to do anything anyone asked of her.

Speaking from the hotel in Beersheba where she and her brother were staying, Karen expressed fear of returning to her home in Sderot.

Living under the constant barrages of Kassams "is very scary" she said, a short while before her sister's funeral was to take place.

Palestinian rockets fired at a town in Israel proper claim another life, a teenage girl. She wasn't a settler and was doing the Palestinians any harm. This is what Palestinian terrorism means: the deliberate murder of innocents.

A photo of Ella ABuksis, from Ha'aretz:

Rather than worrying about the Jewish "Settlers" who bought their land from the Arabs with hard cash, perhaps we can recognize that the block to peace is the Arab Settlers, who build on land they did not buy and are shelling the rightful owners of land they demand.

I have never found that building a farm is an obstacle to peace compared to shelling towns and blowing up coffee shops with belly bombs. It is long past time for politicians to publicly state that the reason for the conflict in the Middle East is the Arab Killers, not the Jewish Victims.

G-d does not need to hear it. He knows it. The world needs to hear it, or they will incur His Wrath. G-d is judging the world by their treatment of His people, and the World is getting a F.

This is a test that will change the face of the world forever. G-d has lined out the borders of the Nations long in the past. Wars come and Go, but France is France, Brittany is Britain, Germania is Germany. Empires come and go, but when an Empire dissolves, each Nation returns to its present form, and over its present land. For in all but the UN (which is an Empire by the way, not a Nation), the crown of a Nation is based on the land it occupies, the land is not based on the crown.

Empire is the collection of crowns under a common ruler, and the crowns remain after the death of the Emperor and the dissolution of the Empire.

But in the end of the days of the Gentiles, G-d sets a test that those nations that burden themselves with Jerusalem, will be cut asunder.

Zechariah 12:3
And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it.

The change in permanent. Those nations that meddle in the affairs of Jerusalem, that create Road Maps to peace that change the borders of Jerusalem the city that G-d claims as his, will have their borders changed.

It is not for man to draw the lines of Nations, it is the pen of G0d. And man will sow what he reaps.

Read Zechariah 12 in the Tanach, for that day is fast approching and it is a GREAT DAY for Judah, and Mankind.

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