“Hamas told us they wouldn’t shoot and then they killed my daughter”

Warning: This article contains descriptions of violent acts.

When Tsachi Idan was brought to Gaza, his hands were still covered in his daughter’s blood.

He was not allowed to wash them after petting them Maayan18, murdered in front of her family by a Hamas fighter.

She also failed to wipe them off before using her body to cover her two youngest children as the sound of explosions buzzed the air outside her home.

Throughout the ordeal, Hamas used a telephone to broadcast the family’s pain and terror to the world via Facebook Live.

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Gali IdanTsachi’s wife, is now far away from her beloved Nahal Oz, one of the many communities in southern Israel attacked by Hamas on October 7.

She and her surviving children are taken care of in another kibbutz, surrounded by attention and comfort. But it’s not your house.

Their home is where the family has lived since Maayan was four years old. It’s the house where they grew up and created memories together, and where their little brothers were born.

Maayan, the eldest daughter, was mature and shy. “She was perfect,” said a neighbor.

She had just gotten her driver’s license and had her first boyfriend. She loved reading and asked for books for her birthday four days before she was murdered.

As Gali says, he will now be 18 years old forever.

The moment of the attack

Gali sits in a shady spot under the citrus trees and says she doesn’t want to talk about the pain of that day, which is too raw. But she does it for her husband Tsachi.

‘I want him to come back. Whole and alive. “I want him back now.”

On October 7, the family woke up to the sound of alarms warning of rocket fire from Gaza. They knew what to do. But that morning something was different.

“It was unusual and very intense”Gali tells me. “It was a bombing. One bombing after another. We couldn’t even go outside to breathe. “We locked ourselves in the mamad, our protected room in the house.”

“Tsachi and I looked at each other and told each other that something was wrong here. That something was very wrong,” he continues.

“We received messages on the internal system of the kibbutz saying that we were under attack and that we had to stay inside the mamad. At one point they told us to be calm because there was probably an infiltration of terrorists into the kibbutz.”

“They need to understand that this is something that was never possible. It was always the nightmare of nightmares, but There was always a solution for that situation from the state or the security forces.. And suddenly it was real. The nightmare was real.”

Gali describes how something exploded outside the house at that moment, shattering the glass windows. Then footsteps and voices sounded in the house. A man shouted in accented English: “We don’t shoot.”

But they did it.

“Tsachi clung to the door and wouldn’t let it open,” Gali said. “There’s no lock on it and the kids were screaming and there was chaos in the room. It was dark, but then Maayan responded.”

“He saw that they had managed to open the door slightly. So he went up and helped Tsachi hold the door open.”

Gali cries, but she continues to describe that moment.

“They shouted ‘we are not shooting’, and then they shot. Tsachi asked, “Who did they hit, who did they hit?” It was Maayan. She fell next to him, and then Hamas was able to open the door. There was a shout and they turned on the lights.”

“Maayan was in a huge pool of blood. I checked on her and realized she had received a blow to the head and was seriously injured. They shouted at us to get out of the mamad. We told the kids, ‘don’t look,’ and I took them outside.”

“Why are they here? Why are they killing?”

In their nightwear, Tsachi, Gali and their two youngest children, Jael11 years old, and Shachar9, sat on the ground as the sound of gunfire echoed around them.

One of her captors took Gali’s phone, asked for the password and began recording the family to broadcast on Facebook Live.

The video is painful to watch. For more than 26 minutes, the family is seen crouching as more and more air raid sirens sound and the Hamas attack continues. The children jump from the shock of the gunshots and cry in their parents’ arms. Meanwhile, Maayan’s lifeless body lies a few meters away.

“Fortunately, my children are courageous in an indescribable way,” says Gali. “They talked to the terrorists, I don’t know how they could. They asked why are they here, why are they shooting and why are they killing. Maybe that saved us.”

“And Tsachi was devastated. He watched his daughter die, watched her get shot in the head and die next to her. His daughter who had just turned 18 years old. The house was full of balloons and congratulations and… and blood.’

Finally, Tsachi was told to get up. They cuffed his hands behind his back. The children shouted at the Hamas militants not to take their father and kill him. But they took him.

“Do you want to show yourself as monsters?”

SharonGali’s second eldest daughter, who was in Tel Aviv when the attack took place, tries to comfort her mother as she talks about her terrible experience.

The 15 year old girl managed to talk to his father on the phone during the attack.

“Sharon, we’re in trouble, I’ll call you later. “I love you,” Tsachi said and hung up. It was the last time they spoke. Gali’s last words to her husband are also etched in her memory.

“When he left the house, I told him, ‘I love you, don’t play the hero, be smart.’ Be careful and come back to me in one piece. And that’s it.”

“And now I want it to come back to me, whole and good,” says Gali. “Tsachi needs to be here and mourn her daughter. I have to hug him.”

Israel has already identified more 200 people are being held hostage by Hamas in Gaza. Families are being torn apart across Israel and around the world.

“I don’t understand what their goal is,” says Gali.

“Do they want to show themselves as monsters? Is or are. You are monsters. They are the worst nightmare our children can have. They are terror. There is no way to define it. It’s terrible. I don’t know how long this scar will last. But they have to bring the citizens back. “They should bring them all back.”

Father kidnapped, daughter murdered

On another kibbutz, far from home, Maayan’s coffin lies quietly in front of rows of chairs.

There are not enough seats for the hundreds of mourners who come to remember her, with wreaths and bouquets of colorful flowers.

Friends and family give speeches and share memories of a young girl who enjoyed playing volleyball and loved life.

Gali addresses the gathered crowd and thinks of her daughter. When he’s not at the microphone, he’s hugging his surviving children tightly.

Yael and Shachar, just 11 and 9 years old, have seen such horrors as their little faces They burst into tears again and again. Their sister has died and their father is not there to comfort them.

Tsachi’s absence is felt everywhere. Gali says she wants the world to know her name. She is willing to do anything to help free him.

Many of the mourners wear T-shirts with photos of the father and Maayan on the front. Above their faces appear the words ‘kidnapped father’ and ‘murdered daughter’, family photos from a happier time.

On the back is a simple and powerful message: “Bring Tsachi back.”

In this unimaginable darkness, his family needs him. (JO)