Hamas killed our daughter on Oct.7. This is what we want to tell Jews stepping away from Israel
(JTA) — Eleven months ago, Hamas murdered our daughter while she was dancing and celebrating life at a music festival in Re’im, Israel.
At 6:50 a.m. on Oct. 7, Gili messaged us that something was going on. She told us not to worry. More texts. Gunshots. She was hiding, warning friends to stay away from the area. At 9:14, she wrote: “Until now I wasn’t afraid. Now I’m scared.” By 9:35, we later learned, the terrorists found her. Within five minutes, they murdered Gili and nearly 30 other young people at point-blank range — a fraction of the 364 people who were killed at the festival.
The brutality with which Hamas murdered our Good Life Gili, our radiant, wonderful girl, at just 24 years old, echoes the evil of the recent execution of hostages Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Carmel Gat, Alexander Lobanov, Ori Danino, Eden Yerushalmi and Almog Sarusi. Five of these six beautiful souls were at the Nova music festival, like Gili. All of their families are processing the worst news of their lives.
It’s the news we received three days after Gili’s last message, after we frantically headed south to find her, after we pleaded on Facebook for more information — “OUR GILI IS STILL MISSING” — after each passing hour drained the possibility that she would stumble through the front door and into our arms.
We spoke at Gili’s eulogy, like the hostages’ families did at theirs. And yet there were no words. There are no words. When we now watch videos of Gili, sometimes we laugh and sometimes we cry and most times our joy and our grief are not oil and water, they do not separate, but blend into a new, strange taste of life.
As Gili would say: “Why one or the other when you can have both?”
Gili, for whom 24 hours in a day was never enough, took so many roles. An adventurer, she worked three jobs to save money for the dream trip she took to South America. A listener, Gili sat for hours at a time with each of the lone soldiers — those without family in Israel — which whom she worked in the Israeli army.
After Gili’s death, we have found new roles ourselves.
We are gardeners, tending to the flowers on her grave and watering the seeds of her memory.
We are archivists, collecting thousands of photos and videos of our daughter; compiling hundreds, often unsolicited testimonials about the ways she shaped people’s lives.
We are messengers, talking about Gili with whomever will listen: Gili, with a conquering smile and an infectious laugh, “Guppy” to her campers, who took the coffee kit in her backpack to the mountains, the desert, the sea, who gave her heart to everyone from children with special needs to the store cashier.
More than anything, we miss Gili. The faint thrum of our constant grief can balloon in pitch and intensity when we least expect it. Waiting at a traffic light. Or at the supermarket, where our tears condense like the dew on the carton of milk we just removed from the refrigerator. When we’re awake or asleep, in every activity and every moment, we miss our girl. There is no life after Gili. Our only path into the future is with Gili.
And so we share Gili with others. They share her with us. We find her in unexpected places — the group of girls who got a common tattoo in her honor; the memories of a stranger she met on a Colombian beach. And we make pilgrimages to the places she loved the most, which brought us 6,000 miles over the ocean this summer to the United States to visit summer two camps, Tel Yehudah and Ben Frankel, that Gili called home.
As we walked through Camp Tel Yehudah, a Young Judaea teen leadership summer camp in Barryville, New York where she worked in 2019 and 2022, there was Gili in her old room with the world map and desk she brought. There was Gili on the roof that she watched the sunset from, even though it was (technically) forbidden. But more than anything, we felt Gili’s presence in the young people at camp, who captured the message she’d want to send to American Jews right now.
On one Saturday night, we saw 400 young Jewish American campers dancing on the grass to Israeli songs. They jumped. They sang along. Those who knew her there told us that Gili was always the first to get up and dance. Her confidence helped others overcome that initial, collective moment of awkwardness.
This dance session reflected two of the things Gili cared most about: close relationships between American and Israeli Jews, and the joy of life.
When she was 17, Gili first came to the U.S. in 2017 to share Israeli culture with American Jews at Camp Ben Frankel, an overnight summer camp in Illinois. If she messed up in English, one of her friends told us, she’d laugh and say: “You know guys, I’m really smart and funny in Hebrew.” Gili channeled that same passion for cross-cultural connection working with American lone soldiers back in Israel.
Gili’s warmth melted barriers of language and distance until young campers felt part of one community. Gili never believed in a blank-check relationship with Israel, the kind that says always support and never question. She did, however, see the bonds between American and Israeli Jews as inviolable and fragile: ties that cannot be denied yet must be nurtured with joy, music, dance, food and more.
A message for American Jewry
Today, as some young American Jews drift away from Israel, we ask them to remember that Israel is also Gili. It is Gili dancing at the Nova music festival, living a normal life in her early 20s, trying to figure out what career path she’ll pursue. Young American Jews should remember that they don’t have to choose between loving Israel and criticizing it: they can have a complex relationship that includes both.
Those kids dancing on the grass that Saturday radiated joy. At her funeral, we made a promise to Gili and to ourselves: “We will not surrender to sadness, we will sanctify joy. This is your will, Gili, our beloved.”
Many times, forward is a bog, and we sink with each small step. Every day when we visit Gili’s grave, we see our charismatic girl inscribed across a headstone, a juxtaposition that feels like a contradiction. What does our daughter, always so full of life, have to do with a grave?
We try to take care of her, even though she was the one who often took care of us — staying awake until 3 a.m. when we were out late to make sure we were okay. We replace her memorial candle. We gather leaves that have fallen. We search for buds, signs of life, on the trees we planted in her honor.
We search for life ourselves. We go to the theater and sports events. Months after an unimaginable rupture, we remain enveloped in an endless stream of love. Gili’s friends come to light the eighth candle of Hanukkah. Kids at Ben Frankel approach and ask if they can hug us.
There will never, ever, be an end to the grief. But there is, there must be, a continuity to the joy.
Five years ago, Gili and her friends built a giant Star of David out of wooden planks as a parting gift to Camp Tel Yehudah. To the right, in one photo, stands Gili, sporting denim shorts, a black long sleeve, sunglasses, and as usual, a smile. Pummeled by rain and snow, the structure was expected to remain intact for less than a year. Half a decade later, the Star of David stands tall.
Who would have thought Gili would be gone instead?
The two of us take a photo in front of the Star of David during our visit to Tel Yehudah. We try to smile. One of us wears a T-shirt with that favorite slogan of Gili’s: “Why one or the other when you can have both?” We grasp onto its wooden planks as if we are touching our daughter, and in a way we are, because in her 24 years Gili created so much that outlasted her.
And she continues to be the catalyst of so much good: A new research center in Gili’s name at Israel’s Geha Mental Health Center will aim to prevent suicide and save lives. A new trail in the town of Lapid, full of trees and flowers, is being built in her name. At her old high school, a new garden with benches and tables will provide spaces for kids to sit and talk, reflecting Gili’s love of nature and willingness to listen.
A few months ago, Gili’s friends created a sticker of her. They asked to bring our Gili, whom they described not as a ray of light but as the sun itself, to nature sites in Israel, to guest houses in South America and East Asia, to inscribe her on their guitar cases, to carry her to all the places she might have visited.
Like us, Gili’s friends want to share her light with others. We humbly ask, for our daughter, that you search for a sliver of joy wherever you can find it right now and share it with whoever you can.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.
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