Organs Donated From American Student Killed In Attack

Alisa M. Flatow, the Brandeis University student who died of wounds from a Gaza suicide bombing, was the focus of poignant testimony Tuesday after her father, Stephen, agreed to donate her organs to patients in need.

Doctors said that in her death she saved six people through the donation of her heart, liver, lungs, kidneys and pancreas.

At Sheva hospital in Tel Aviv, Esther Yamin, wife of lung transplant patient Moshe Yamin, said: “My heart aches for the girl who died. I can’t imagine how much suffering it gives her parents. I want to thank her from the bottom of my heart. She gave my husband life.”

Flatow, 20, of West Orange, N.J., was taken off life support Monday, a day after an Islamic Jihad militant drove a van loaded with explosives into the bus she was riding in the Gaza Strip. A piece of shrapnel went through her skull; she never regained consciousness.

After doctors pronounced her brain dead, her father consulted rabbis and agonized for hours at her bedside - crying and holding her hand. In the end, he authorized doctors to remove his daughter’s organs for donation to “the people of Israel.”