SHE CAME ON A STRETCHER... to bury her mom, dad and 3 siblings Funerals begin for 15 killed in suicide bombing; Israel lashes back at PLO

JERUSALEM--A Holocaust survivor's granddaughter, wounded and withan IV drip in her arm, insisted today on being carried to herfamily's funeral.

Ten-year-old Leah Schijveschuurder lost five family members in thePalestinian suicide bombing the day before, which killed 15 people inJerusalem and provoked a fierce Israeli response.

Surrounded by friends and relations, Leah wept as she looked downon the five bodies lying on stretchers under black sheets.

"To my sorrow, we were punished by Heaven," Leah said in afarewell letter to her parents. "I loved you dearly. I deeply regretthe times when I talked back and was disrespectful."

Lying side by side in the cemetery were the bodies of her father,Mordechai, 44, his wife, Tzirli, 41, sister Raya, 14, brother AvrahamYitzhak, 3, and sister Hemda, 2.

Leah and her 8-year-old sister, Haya, were severely injured.

Three older boys--Ben-Zion, 21, Meir, 20, and Shmuel, 16, had notjoined the family at the restaurant that took the force of the blast.

Standing next to the bodies and sobbing, one of the surviving sonssaid of his youngest sister: "You never even learned to talkproperly. You never learned to live properly."

The Schijveschuurder family are Holocaust survivors. Mordechai'ssister, Elisheva Schijveschuurder, said: "Leah's grandmother was inthree Nazi camps in the war and now this has happened to her family.This is what Hitler did before. Now it's Arafat."

At least two other foreign nationals were killed in the attack.One, an American, was buried today. Judith Greenbaum, 31, of Passaic,New Jersey, was several months pregnant with her first child. She wascompleting her master's in Jewish studies in Jerusalem.

In a rare move, Dan Kurtzer, the new American ambassador toIsrael, attended the funeral.

In response, Israeli police took over the Palestinians' politicalheadquarters in disputed east Jerusalem early today, and warplanesflattened a West Bank security post, in retaliation for the suicidebombing in a Jerusalem pizzeria.

The raid on the Orient House, the PLO headquarters in the city,was Israel's most direct challenge yet to Palestinian claims to eastJerusalem as a future capital.

Jerusalem's future was the most contentious issue in peace talksthat collapsed earlier this year.

Israel said the takeover of the Orient House and nine PalestinianAuthority offices in Abu Dis, a Palestinian neighborhood abutting thecity, was a message to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat that he wouldnot make political gains through violence.

Thursday's suicide bombing was claimed by the Islamic militantgroup Hamas, one of Arafat's political rivals, but Israel held Arafatindirectly responsible, saying he has done nothing to prevent attackson Israelis.