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CNN Sunday Morning
Organs of Israeli Bombing Victim Save Palestinian; Woman Killed by Israelis while Moving to Safety
Aired April 07, 2002 - 07:34 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Now we have two stories from two sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. John Vause and Michael Holmes bring us these pieces.
The first one is perhaps some hope for peace. The second, unfortunately, does not inspire that hope.
We begin with CNN's John Vause.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN VAUSE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): At a cemetery in Tel Aviv, another funeral for one of the victim's of Israel's bloody Passover. Zaeff Dida (ph) killed by a suicide bomber at a hotel in the seaside town of Netanya. He was buried alongside his daughter, Sadan, also killed in the same attack.
His father, brothers and wife still bear the physical scars of the blast which claimed 25 lives. Zaeff survived for a week on life support. When he died, his family donated his organs. And last night, Aysha Buhada received one of his kidneys.
They waited for this transplant for two years. And finally, this Palestinian woman from east Jerusalem was saved by a Jewish victim of a suicide bombing.
AYSHA BUHADA: He's like my son, all our sons. Don't think I discriminate between a Muslim and a Jew. It's all the same.
VAUSE: Israelis have no say who receives a relative's organs. They're given on a basis of need.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's kind of life here is we are mixed together, patient, physicians, victims, all together.
VAUSE: Zaeff's son told me his father would be happy to know that he saved a life, any life.
IMROD VIDER, SON: Even if it will be give to his organs to one of the families that was connected to the suicide bomber, so I'm sure that he will give it.
VAUSE: From Aysha's son, gratitude and condemnation of the suicide bombers.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But the Israeli army won't stop it. The only solution is the table, negotiations. That is the solution.
VAUSE: And from the family which has lost so much, hope this gift of life will be a symbol for both sides to end the violence.
VIDER: I don't believe that all of our suicide bombers or I have Arab friends. We are working with Arabs. I live around Arabs in the Jordan Valley. My father taught me all the time that whether you are Jewish or Arab, it is not matter nor any culture. Life is life for us.
This is what he taught me. And this is what I'm doing.
VAUSE (on camera): According to his family, Zaeff Vider always believed that Israel could exist peacefully with its Arab neighbors. And they say now as a part of him still lives on, so too his hopes for Israel.
(voice-over): For now though, two families both finding solace there can be life from so much death.
John Vause, CNN, Tel Aviv.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A grieving father, a United States citizen with much of his family still living there, calls upon his government.
FARHAN SALEH, FATHER: I'm asking the American government. I ask Mr. Bush where is the human rights they are (UNINTELLIGIBLE) for? Where's the human rights?
HOLMES: His son-in-law mourns for his wife.
MURAD ABU GHARBIEH, HUSBAND: I say to my wife, Sariedah, she's dead.
HOLMES: Last Friday, on the first day of the Israeli incursion into Ramallah, Murad Abu Gharbieh was in his wife with his wife Sariedah (ph) and baby son, Murad. Sariedah (ph), born in Washington, D.C. and a U.S. citizen, was frightened and made a fateful decision.
(voice-over): There had been shooting in the streets, but not they thought, in these streets. Sariedah (ph) wanted to take her family to her father's house, literally a couple of hundred meters away. They'd done that before when there had been previous incursions.
And so, at 4:30 a.m., they set off. There was no curfew. It proved to be a fatal mistake. SALEH: When he took my street down, right away, the firing soldiers approached them. And then soldiers ask him to stop the car. He stopped the car.
GHARBIEH: Someone say in Arabic, like stop. And I stop. When I stop, 20 soldiers, they carry M-16, they shoot me and my wife. Like raining.
HOLMES: Raining bullets you mean?
GHARBIEH: Yes, yes.
HOLMES: Their car, nearly 100 meters from their destination, shows what happened. Shell casings just feet from the car. Bullet holes riddle the vehicle. Neighbors support Murad's story that the soldiers were only steps away from the stopped vehicle when the firing began.
GHARBIEH: When the soldiers shoot, she do like that.
HOLMES: With the baby in her arms?
GHARBIEH: Yes, yes.
HOLMES: To protect the baby?
GHARBIEH: Yes, yes. She do like that.
HOLMES: There's little doubt that the drive was a risky, perhaps foolish one. As tanks rolled in and shooting broke out, but this story is as much about what happened after the shooting as before.
GHARBIETH: I opened the door. He said, "Don't do anything." He said, "Don't do anything." And he came and put the M-16, the gun on my head.
HOLMES: Murad, two bullet wounds in the back of his head, three more in his shoulder, says the soldier told him to raise his hands and then his shirt, to show he was unarmed.
GHARBIETH: I said, "My wife, my baby, my wife, my baby." He didn't do anything.
HOLMES: Then an extraordinary claim.
GHARBIETH: They do like that, "Ha, ha, ha." They see me and see my wife and see the blood on my driving."
HOLMES: And you say they laughed?
GHARBIETH: Yes, yes.
HOLMES: Bleeding profusely, Murad says he grabbed his son and got out of the car. The soldiers still there. Multan incredibly was not only not hurt, but far from his comprehended his brush with death.
GHARBIETH: I take my baby, my son, is laughing.
HOLMES: The baby is laughing.
GHARBIETH: Yes, yes.
HOLMES: The baby.
GHARBIETH: He don't know. He do like that.
HOLMES: Murad staggered up the road before collapsing near his father-in-law's house.
SALEH: He was bleeding, so bleeding very much. And we hear the noise. He was crying, "Help me, help me." And the baby crying, the neighbors cross the street go out. We go out. When we saw his face, God knows what the situation that time.
HOLMES: For two hours, he laid wounded before it was safe enough for the ambulances to come.
Saridah (ph) was taken to a hospital morgue, which quickly filled with bodies. Tuesday, she and more than two dozen others were buried in a temporary mass grave in a car park, opposite the hospital. She was buried in one grave, with another woman. The men, together in a larger grave.
When the shooting here stops, her family says they will give her a proper burial.
I asked Murad what he would say to governments around the world.
GHARBIETH: Nothing. They can't do any, any anything. If I want to say to my God, because he saved me, the government not save me.
HOLMES: Michael Holmes, CNN, Ramallah.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
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