Bomb Found at Home of Doctor Who Gave Israeli’s Heart to Arab

Authorities found a bomb Friday outside the home of a doctor who transplanted the heart of a slain Israeli soldier into a Palestinian, police said. An underground Jewish group said it placed the device.

Police found a similar crude bomb at the home of a professor who invited a Palestinian activist to speak at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, police spokesman Uzi Sandori said.

An anonymous caller telephoned the Israeli newspapers Yediot Aharonot and Maariv early Friday and claimed that a group called the Sicarites placed the bombs at the two homes.

“If they do not leave the country within a week, we will wait for them in a dark corner with a machine gun,” Maariv quoted the caller as saying.

The Sicarites, named after First-Century Jewish zealots who battled the Romans, have claimed responsibility for at least nine attacks on Arabs and liberal Jews, including the machine gun slaying of an Arab outside Jerusalem’s Old City on April 10.

No arrests were ever made in that slaying, and Sandori said no suspects have been detained in connection with the bombs found Friday.

Sandori described the device found outside the West Jerusalem home of Dr. Dov Shimon as a glass seltzer bottle rigged with gunpowder and a candle. He said the candle was apparently meant to set off an explosion, but both devices were found before exploding.

The other bomb was found outside the home of Yoram Ben Porat, who invited Palestinian activist Feisal Husseni to speak at Hebrew University last week.

Shimon, one of two surgeons who performed the heart transplant on the soldier slain by Palestinian attackers, said it was not the first time he has been threatened since the Nov. 15 operation.

“There have been anonymous phone calls to my wife that I was hurt, for example, and was hospitalized. But I was at home at the time,” he told Army Radio.

“I am astonished there are people in Israel who cannot separate medicine from politics,” he said.

The heart was removed from Sgt. Zeev Traum, 40, who died of head wounds suffered in an ambush by Arab guerrillas in the occupied Gaza Strip. It was transplanted into Hanna Khader, 54, a former hotel manager from Arab East Jerusalem.

Hadassah Hospital spokeswoman Ruth Mekel said Friday that Khader was in good condition.

His wife, Mary, said her husband can speak and also walk with some help but cannot yet eat solid food.

She said she could not understand why some Jews are angry about the transplant.

“They previously received organs from Arabs, so why are they making this a problem?” she said in a telephone interview.