PROFILE: SOME OF THE VICTIMS FROM YESTERDAY'S SUICIDE BOMBING IN JERUSALEM

All Things Considered: June 12, 2003

Funerals Held for Victims of Jerusalem Bus Bombing

MELISSA BLOCK, host:

Funerals were also under way in Israel today for the victims of yesterday's suicide bombing in Jerusalem. Among those who died were grandmothers, female soldiers and a foreign worker who has yet to be identified. NPR's Linda Gradstein reports.

LINDA GRADSTEIN reporting:

Yaffa and Yehuda Mualem were married for 42 years. Together, they ran a small neighborhood shoe store in Jerusalem. The highlight of Yaffa's week was Saturday, when her three sons and grandchildren would come to visit and eat her Iraqi cooking. Every week, she took the bus to Muhane Yehuda, Jerusalem's large open-air food and vegetable market. Police say yesterday's suicide bomber, dressed as an ultra-Orthodox Jew, boarded the bus at the market. Yaffa's son, Ezra(ph), says the family begged her not to go to the market, saying it was too dangerous.

EZRA: And we told her all the time, `Do us a favor. Don't go to the market and buy the things. You have another places with security, more security.' But she like it, because she liked to see the vegetables; she liked to see the bread.

GRADSTEIN: Friends describe Yaffa as a quiet, modest women who loved to cook for friends and family. She emigrated to Israel with her family from Iraq as a teen-ager. Ezra says his three young children don't really understand that their grandmother is gone. Even for him, he says, it's hard to absorb.

EZRA: All these years and suddenly your mother--they're cutting the life of your mother, they're cutting your life of family. And the family is not going to be the same like was before, and people must understand beyond the picture the hurt people.

GRADSTEIN: Another one of the victims of the latest suicide bombing was an American immigrant. Forty-seven-year-old Alan Beer, originally from Cleveland, moved to Israel four years ago and found work at a technology firm.

Among the wounded was another American, Sarri Singer, the daughter of New Jersey's state Senator Robert Singer, who, according to Israeli media, is close to President Bush. Singer flew to Israel today to visit his daughter in hospital. In an interview with Israel television, he urged the president to visit, as well.

SOUNDBITE OF ISRAEL TELEVISION BROADCAST

State Senator ROBERT SINGER (New Jersey): Come and talk to the families. Come and see where are 100 innocent who were hurt, 16 innocent families lost people, destroyed, people are seriously hurt. Ask them about--peace is important. No one's against peace. Everyone here wants peace. But there has to be--the terrorism must stop.

GRADSTEIN: Linda Gradstein, NPR News, Jerusalem.