Hundreds of mourners gathered Monday at the cemetery in Ein Harod Ihud to lay Aviv Maor, 18, to rest after she was killed in a combined terror attack in northern Israel on Friday.
Maor, an avid horseback rider, was accompanied on her final journey by dozens of riders who arrived from Rishpon carrying Israeli flags.
The funeral of Aviv Maor
(Video: Nachum Segal)
“How do we go on living without you, without your scent, your laughter and your humor?” her father, Tal Maor, said through tears as he eulogized his eldest daughter. “We were privileged to be closest to your light. We hope your soul is free now and that you are watching over us from above. We will love you forever.”
Her younger sister, Nitzan, also spoke at the funeral. “I never imagined I would be eulogizing my sister at 17, and you, my beautiful girl, had not yet turned 19,” she said. “There are no words to sum up what you were to me and to the entire world.”
She described Aviv as “the girl with the purest heart I know, someone who helped animals before people, who needed nothing more than a horse, open fields, a cigarette and music.”
“She loved cars so much. Everywhere we went, you were always looking at them and knew every type,” she added. “Thank you for who you were to me. You were supposed to enlist in the army in a month and were in the best period of your life, just doing what you loved and what made you happy. My angel, they took half my heart. They took you from me. He woke up one morning and took you. Please watch over me.”
Aviv’s mother, Einat Maor, recounted the moments of terror following the attack. “My son, who was with her, called me and screamed, ‘Mom, they stabbed Aviv. Come quickly,’” she said. “I drove at 180 kilometers per hour and called the police and an ambulance. When I arrived, she was already lying in a ditch, covered in blood. I screamed, ‘Why aren’t you saving her?’ and then I understood there was probably nothing to do. She was already gone.”
Police said the Palestinian terrorist, Ahmad Abu al-Rub, 34, an illegal entrant from Qabatiya in northern Samaria, began the terror attack by ramming and killing Shimshon Mordechai, 68, from Beit Shean. He then stabbed Maor to death.
About 50 minutes after the attack began, the terrorist was neutralized and later hospitalized in moderate condition.