Israel at war: families in desperate hunt for loved ones killed and captured
The faces of the dead, kidnapped and missing peer out in a mosaic of despair. In the chaos following the Hamas terror attack on Israel it was difficult to know who’d survived, who’d died and who’d been bundled into Gaza.
The faces of the dead, the kidnapped and the missing peer out in a mosaic of despair.
In the chaos that followed the Hamas terror attack on Israel it was difficult to know who had survived, who had died and who had been bundled into Gaza to an unknown fate.
Soon enough, Israelis began to post messages with their photos, some in grief and anger, others in desperation, searching for news about loved ones.
Yoni Asher shared pictures of his wife, Doron and their two daughters, Raz, 4, and two-year-old Aviv, who had been spending the last day of Sukkot with family in Kibbutz Nir Oz, in southern Israel. On Saturday morning the news broke that the kibbutz had been the target on of one of the most savage attacks.
“She told me the terrorists are in the house,” Yoni said.
Then the line went dead.
The terrorists had discovered Doron and the girls hiding in a fortified safe room with her mother, Efrat Katz.
The next day a friend sent Yoni a video: Doron, their daughters and his mother-in-law in the back of a metal cart, being taken by gunmen.
The tracking data on Doron’s phone confirmed his worst fears: she was in Khan Younis, a city inside Gaza.
Many others in the same kibbutz never survived the initial onslaught. Budding politician Tamar Kedem-Siman Tov and her husband Yonatan, a picture of light and happiness in family photos with their two six-year-old daughters Shahar and Arbal and their four-year old son Omer, were all killed in a bunker.
Yonatan’s mother, Carol Simantov, died with them.
The family was well known in Sydney from their volunteer work at Bondi institution Our Big Kitchen.
Rabbi Chaim Levy and his wife Chana, a Sydney-based couple, learnt about the death of the family, long-time friends, through social media.
“They were the most beautiful people,” Mrs Levy said.
“You see hundreds of people who have killed in Israel online, and when it pops up on your Instagram, a gorgeous family photo, and you know the people in that photo, it’s beyond devastating.
“It gets you in your gut. We are walking around like zombies in total shock.”
Safta Bayder, a grandmother, was killed by terrorists who then took a picture of her body on her phone and uploaded it to her Facebook page.
“This is how we found out,” said granddaughter Mor Bayder. “Seven in the morning, I saw the nightmare of my life.”
Of the more than 100 Israelis kidnapped during the attack, many were young women.
Shany Tsaban, 31, told how her parents had spent the day walking through hospital wards searching for her missing sister, Bar Zohar, 23.
The young woman had been at the Supernova festival in southern Israel, the scene of one of the most horrific massacres.
Bar had called her parents frantically as rockets began to fall on the partygoers, begging them to come and get her.
She messaged later saying she was okay, but her family have heard nothing since.
Noa Argamani, 25, who had been attending the music festival was last seen being driven away on a motorcycle as another group of militants hold her boyfriend, Avinatan Or, his arm pinned behind his back.
She screams “Don’t kill me! No, no, no”, her arms outstretched towards her boyfriend.
The couple had been desperately trying to hide, messaging friends with their location and pleading for Israeli soldiers to come rescue them.
“Me and Noa are hiding here,” Mr Or wrote. “Tell them there’s a gang of 20 men that are finding people who are hiding and lynching them.”
The messages stopped shortly after that.
Aharon Shem Tov received a video from his 22-year-old daughter Inbar, hiding from attackers in a dumpster with five others.
At 8.45am she told him “everything is OK” but three hours later texted: “we are going to die”.
It was the last time he heard from her.
“Maybe the terrorists took her or she ran away, I don’t know,” Mr Tov said.
Shani Louk, a German national with a Polish father, is believed dead after her naked body was paraded by the militants on the back of a truck yelling “Allahu Akbar” and claiming she was an Israeli soldier. At one point one of the militants spits on her bloodied body in video of the scene.
Ms Louk, a graphic designer and tattoo artist, was immediately identified by family members because of her distinctive tattoos. “We are devastated,’’ a cousin said.
Debbie Shahar Troen Mathias and Shlomi Mathias were killed shielding their teenage son, Rotem, with their bodies when Hamas terrorists invaded their home.
They too had been sheltering in a safe room when gunmen found them and opened fire. Their act of bravery saved their 16-year-old, who suffered a bullet wound to his abdomen but survived.
British man Jake Marlowe, 26, was working as part of the security team at the dance festival. He hasn’t been heard from since.
Mr Marlowe, a heavy-metal fan, had left Britain two years ago after becoming alarmed at the rise of antisemitism in the country.
Another Briton, Nathanel Young, 20, had been serving in the Israel Defence Forces and was reported killed.
In a statement his family said he had been “happy and thriving” in Israel.
Age made no difference to the terrorists.
A 10-year-old boy, Erez Kalderon, was snatched from his home in Nir Oz with his father Offer and sister Sahar, 16.
An 85-year-old grandmother, Yaffa Adar, was bundled into a golf buggy at gunpoint by a group of terrorists.
Her granddaughter Adva said the family lost contact with her on Saturday evening and later found her home had been burned down.
