From a high school classmate of Aish Kodesh's mother:

Aish Kodesh Gil Mor HY"D, 26, of Mevo Modiin was buried last night. His colleague, Itai Suissa, underwent 20 hours of surgery last night and today, and is still in the intensive care unit at Hadassah Ein Karem. Kodesh's wife and father talk about him (in English - they are both Americans) on Jerusalem Post Radio. You can find it at:
Murdered man's family speaks

Susan from Ra'anana, who is both my client and my former neighbor from New Jersey, went to high school in New Jersey with Zehava Gil Mor, Kodesh's mother. Here's what she has to say:

"On a different note - when a soldier or a Jewish citizen gets killed or hurt in Israel - every Jew mourns. It is with such a deep, profound sorrow that I am writing to say that yesterday's killing in the old city, of a guard at the bituach leumi office was of a very special young man - Aysh Kodesh Gil Mor. His mother's name, as we knew her back in our days at Bruriah is Sheila Alexander (now Zehava Gil Mor) from Elizabeth, New Jersey. She was in Fern's and my class for the four years that we were there. Another old classmate called to let me know that it was him. She couldn't stop crying on the phone. He was Zehava's bechor. He had been married for three years. He was 26, as was his wife. He had a little daughter - a year and a half, who will never know her father. He was studying computers and needed to work part time to support his family. Zehava spoke to this old classmate and told her that she first heard of the killing when listening to the news. Although there were no names given - she knew where her son worked. Her home was called and her husband and daughter in law went to the hospital together. While sitting at home, she decided that she had to go there too. She called a taxi, and while on the way to the hospital, heard the news again, where it was announced that one of the guards had died on the way to the hospital. She didn't know what to do. She said "how could I pray that it wasn't my son - that would mean that it was the son of another mother." She said that it was always her worst nightmare - when he served in Lebanon - that he would get hurt or killed. He made it through, got married, had a baby and then her worst nightm are came true - not in Lebanon - in OUR Old City. What can I say? I will pay a shiva call over the next two days. I don't even know what to say to her. HaShem Yerachem....
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B"H

From: Stevie Klein

I've been to funerals. I've been to too many funerals. But never have I been to a funeral like this.

The building was rough, Jerusalem stone rough. We stood outside, the night was cold and star filled. People were gathering in streams, in bunches, having heard the news on television, from friends by phone. They were mostly young. Humble, respectful and religious by all accounts, Aish Kodesh Gil Mor, a son -first fuit really, of Reb Shlomo's Moshav mevo Me'or Modi'im, had been 25, had a 20 year old wife and a one year old son. We'd been together many of these people and I in the morning at the Kotel for a joyful Carlebach bar mitzvah of the youngest son of the great singer and poet Ben Zion Solomon, and now here we were in the house of death, stunned, shocked and silent. The building was hidden away, unmarked, nothing like the fancy funeral palaces of New York and Tampa. After the night chill had reached inside me, the doors opened and we were pushed into a stone cold room with no seats, absolutely no seats and no comfort. No fancy ladies, no plump guys in suits. No sham and no pretense. Poor people, Moshav people, young soldiers and sobbing girls standing in cold silence for what must have been a hour and seemed forever...staring at stone floors, stone walls and a stark stone slab angled in the middle. The young widow was sitting on the floor wailing. They brought him in. No casket. no comfort. He had been riddled with bullets, his body had no shape. He was borne on an battered wooden stetcher strung with jagged metal slats, He had only a tallis for warmth. I was pushed next to him. It was almost too much to bear. They talked, his Father, his wife, some wavy haired politician, they sceamed, his friends, his Mother. Then men with the well worn face of death came and took him away. The war has come to the Chevra. I am numb with what I witnessed.
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From today's Jerusalem Post online: Two Israelis killed in Jerusalem attacks

Two Israelis killed in Jerusalem attacks By Etgar Lefkovits JERUSALEM (October 31) - Two Israelis were killed and another seriously wounded yesterday in separate terror attacks in and around Jerusalem. Amos Makhlouf, 30, of Jerusalem's Gilo neighborhood, was found murdered yesterday morning, and security guard Aishkodesh Gil Mor, 25, of Mevo Modi'im, was shot dead, and Itai Suissa, 22, of Jerusalem, was wounded seriously in an attack inside the National Insurance Institute office in east Jerusalem. A group calling itself the "Martyrs of the Al-Aksa Intifada" claimed responsibility for the east Jerusalem attack. Shortly after noon, a man entered the NII on Rehov Issfani in the heart of eastern Jerusalem. From close range, he fired a number of shots at the two security guards seated in the first floor waiting room, hitting them in the head, chest, and abdomen. The assailant then fled on foot. Gil Mor and Suissa received initial treatment from a doctor from an adjacent clinic before an ambulance arrived and rushed them to Hadassah-University Hospital, Ein Kerem. Gil Mor, who was hit in the head, died almost immediately upon arrival at the hospital. Suissa remains in serious condition. They were both armed and wearing flack-jackets, but "it seems clear that the attacker or attackers took the security men by surprise and they did not have the chance to use their weapons in self-defense," Jerusalem police chief Cmdr. Yair Yitzhaki said. Later, police acknowledged that there was clearly a lapse of security in the building. Gil Mor and Suissa were positioned inside the building, instructed to check people going to the second floor. But there was no one guarding the building's entrance, allowing the attacker to walk right in. Both Jerusalem police and Mayor Ehud Olmert said that clearly there were people interested in igniting the capital with violence. "It is clear that there is a directing hand which is trying to drag Jerusalem, which has been relatively peaceful throughout the month, into violence," Yitzhaki said, adding, "There are clearly those who are dissatisfied that Jerusalem has been so quiet up until now." Calling the attacks a "turning point" in the violence, Olmert warned that the capital may soon be the site of increased violence. "Up until now, all attempts to involve the Arab residents of Jerusalem in violence have basically failed. But Arafat wants Jerusalem - not just the Temple Mount - to be in the middle of the storm and so he is trying to ignite the city," he said in a speech last night to Jewish leaders from around the world who had come to Jerusalem on a solidarity mission. "We see this as breaking a sort of code," said NII Director-General Yohanan Stressman. "It's customary in the whole world... not to harm medical institutions, hospitals, ambulances, clinics, or welfare institutions." Immediately after the shooting, Labor and Social Affairs Minister Ra'anan Cohen ordered the office closed. But workers who had long protested the lack of security and had repeatedly voiced concern over threats and stone-throwing incidents, will protest tomorrow by not opening any of the Jerusalem NII offices. Yitzhaki said that despite the temporary closure, Israeli institutions operating in eastern Jerusalem must remain open. "Stopping their operations or closing down is legitimizing such acts," he said, adding that security will be increased. Hours later, police allowed reporters into the office. A pool of blood marked the spot where the attack occurred. Hours earlier, Makhlouf's bound body was found by Palestinians in a ravine between Gilo and Beit Jala. They contacted the Palestinian Police, which transferred his body to the Israeli authorities. Makhlouf had been stabbed several times. He was also bound, and police believe he was killed Saturday while tied up. Before his burial last night, Makhlouf's body was sent to the L. Greenberg Institute of Forensic Medicine at Abu Kabir for autopsy. Makhlouf's family had notified police of his absence on Saturday afternoon, after he failed to return home from a walk. The family charged that police had waited until Sunday to begin searching for him. Police are investigating whether Makhlouf was forcefully abducted from Gilo or was lured into the ravine and then killed. "He left home on Saturday to go for a walk, like he does every Shabbat," said Makhlouf's mother Helena. "Let the people of the country wake up and see what is happening. Let the Jewish people awaken before it is too late, before the same thing happens again to someone else's child." Meanwhile, a Palestinian assailant tried to stab a security guard outside the Ateret Cohanim Yeshiva in the Old City last night. The guard escaped after he struggled with his attacker and snatched the knife from his hands. The Palestinian fled. A Palestinian security officer said that the shooting of Gil Mor and Suissa is a sign that Palestinians want to take the uprising to a new level. "This may be the beginning of a new trend... It shows that the Palestinians want to avenge the killing of Palestinians by the IDF," he said. He expressed concern that the latest killings could spoil the international gains that the intifada has brought the Palestinians, and that a bloody ethnic conflict could be starting. "How long are we going to have to wait until the leaders take the courageous steps and sit down and talk peace?" asked the owner of a flower shop near the NII office, who identified himself as Munier. "Today it is here, yesterday it was in another place. When is this all going to end?"
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