Galit Dan’s thirteen-year-old daughter and her eighty-year-old mother were kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz on Saturday, October 7, when Hamas terrorists invaded Israel’s southern region.
Tragically, several days later, they were confirmed dead.
Maayan Hoffman, Deputy CEO - Strategy and Innovation of the Jerusalem Post Group, and Zvika Klein, Deputy Editor-in-Chief and Jewish World analyst, spoke with Dan, who described her desperate feelings of worry and concern for the fate of her daughter and mother.
Dan was born in Nir Oz and moved to Kissufim several months ago, a kibbutz adjacent to the Gaza Strip. On Saturday, October 7, her 13-year-old daughter Noya was in Nir Oz visiting her grandmother, Carmela, when the terrorists broke into the kibbutz.
“I haven’t heard from them since noon on Saturday,” says Dan. “They said that people were coming into the house and breaking everything, and there was a big noise, and they were very afraid,” she reports.
“I try not to imagine the conditions under which they are being held,” Dan says. “I am begging viewers to imagine how it feels when your daughter and mother have disappeared and have been taken by Hamas. Why do they need children and old people? This is inhuman!”
Dan herself was in Kissufim when the attacks occurred in the South. From 6 AM Saturday, when the bombs began to fall, until 3 AM the following morning, she was in a safe room with her boyfriend and her daughter.
“You can’t imagine what we saw outside,” she says. “Destroyed cars and houses, debris all over – destruction.”
May their memory be for a blessing.