Gavriel Biton

Nov 20, 2000 - Gavriel Biton, 35, of Kfar Darom, was killed when a roadside bomb exploded alongside a bus carrying children from Kfar Darom to school in Gush Katif.

A wire-operated artillery shell ripped into a schoolbus near Kfar Darom in the Gaza Strip, killing two and wounding nine others, most of them children. Three terrorists detonated a 120 mm. shell with a sophisticated fusing mechanism at the bus from a distance of some 20 meters from the road on which the bus was travelling, according to the IDF. Thirty children, teachers and escorts were travelling in the bus as it made its way from the settlement to the school in Gush Katif when the attack took place. Gavriel Biton, a teacher at the school, was killed in the explosion along with Miriam Amitai.

Biton was a native of Yeroham, where he met Avigail Lewis over a decade ago when she went to Yeroham to do her national service and his family "adopted" her. Lewis is the daughter of Hadasa and Aryeh Lewis, former New Yorkers who came here in 1967. Avigail, born in Israel, and Gavriel had six children, the oldest of whom is 12, and the youngest four months old. The couple moved to Kfar Darom some 10 years ago. Shots had recently been fired at their home.

Biton was buried in his native town of Yeroham in the Negev.