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Mourners at Yigal Yehoshua's funeral in Lod on Tuesday
Photo: Oded Balilty / AP
In Israel, the bereaved of a Jew killed in the Middle East conflict donated his kidney to a Palestinian woman.
Yigal Yehoshua, 56, was seriously injured on May 11 after being attacked by a mob in Lod, Israel.
This is reported by the US news channel CNN.
The father of two was so badly injured in the head that he fought for his life for almost a week and succumbed to his injuries last Monday.
It has now been announced that Yehoshua decided to donate his organs while he was still alive.
His family complied.
While one kidney and one lung were given to two Jews, the second kidney was given to Randa Aweis, a 58-year-old Palestinian who had waited seven years for a donor organ.
Only after the operation did she find out who the donor was.
Yehoshua's brother Efi said, according to CNN, that his brother believed in the peaceful coexistence of religions.
"You always said everything would be fine," he said at the funeral.
Abed Halaila, head of the transplant department at Hadassah Medical Center, also told the Israeli newspaper The Times of Israel that the kidney donated was a “symbol of hope”: “I hope for all of us that there will be peace and quiet - and much health."
"We are now a family"
The transplant at Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem was apparently without complications, the hospital said.
Aweis already gave greetings and condolences to the family of her life saver from the hospital.
"We're a family now," she told The Times of Israel.
"The Jewish kidney is now a part of me." The mother of five, who is a Christian, hopes for peace between Jews and Arabs.
The organ recipient's daughter called on people in the region in the newspaper "The Times of Israel" to internalize the "simple message" of this gesture.
"There are no Arabs and Jews," she said, "we are all human and have to live together." According to the report, her family also hoped to meet the relatives of Yehoshua.
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