43 years after nine of her classmates and three adults were murdered en route to school in the Upper Galil, Leah Revivo HY”D (52) died last week from an infection from a fragment of shrapnel lodged in her brain in the 1970 attack.

Her husband and four children on Monday morning 27 Teves 5774 visited the Beersheva kever. After Leah was married she decided to live in the southern capital, far away from the memories of the awful attack.

Leah was first thought to be among the dead and they only realized sometime later that she was alive, albeit gravely injured. She was transported to Rambam Medical Center in Haifa. Family members explain she carried the shrapnel scars on her body her entire life, along with the fragments that remained lodged in her brain. She overcame the odds and fought the ominous predictions of doctors by rehabilitating herself, getting married and having children and a life.

Leah’s life took a turn for the worse two years ago when one of the pieces of shrapnel in her brain became infected. She began having seizures. On erev Rosh Hashanah 5774 she had a major seizure event and she sustained severe neurological damage. About two months ago she was listed “in a vegetative state” and she eventually died of infection from the shrapnel in her head. As a result of her petira, she became the 13th victim of that attack.

The attack occurred in proximity to Kibbutz Baram near the Lebanese border. Terrorists from the DFLP (Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine) fired at a school bus transporting children from Moshav Avivim. The terrorists succeeded in fleeing back to Lebanon.

A son, Kobi, makes a connection between his mother’s petira and the release of convicted terrorists by Israel. He feels that even terrorists that served 20 or 30 years in prison can enjoy life after release, the same life that was taken from the victims. He is strongly opposed to the release of convicted terrorists.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)