By: Hadassa Kalatizadeh

Early morning On October 7th, Gadi Haggai, 73, and Judih Weinstein Haggai, 70, dual US-Israel citizens, were out taking their regular morning walk outside Kibbutz Nir Oz.  The elderly couple was ambushed by armed Hamas terrorists on motorcycles, their relatives say.

As reported by the NY Post, the couple had deep ties to New York, and their relatives are asking for help in getting their family released from the possible clutches of Hamas captivity.  “We know that they were badly wounded. We know that [Judih] still had the phone with her to be able to call and ask for help and provide details. But ever since then, we lost all contact with them,” the couple’s niece, Ofri Haggai, told The Post on Sunday.  “We have no idea what happened to them.”  Ofri, 47, is a global human resources manager in Israel, but she traveled to New York, to her aunt’s native Orange County to ask local politicians here for help in asserting pressure to locate the hostages.  “We need the help of the American people,” Ofri pleaded.  She said her elderly aunt and uncle “are not part of any conflict,” she added. “They are not part of any war. Not the elderly, not the babies, not the mothers, not the young people. They all need to be brought home.”

Ofri says the couple has dual Israel-US citizenship and that her aunt Judih was a native of upstate Goshen, who had moved to Israel some 30 years ago.  She said Gadi too had deep ties to NY, with his mother being born and raised in Manhattan and his father originating from Detroit.   Ofri says that the retired couple experience first hand the horror of the Oct. 7 attack when Hamas terrorists on a motorcycle surrounded them and they were “shot and badly wounded.” Despite being wounded, Judih texted her daughter in Singapore.  “My aunt managed to call the Kibbutz for a medic, to ask for help — a help that never came because the terrorists were already in the Kibbutz,” Ofri told The Post.

The first thing the terrorists had done was shoot out the tires on emergency vehicles at the Kibbutz, she said — “so no one can get any help from the ambulance.” There has not been any news from the couple since.  Judih’s phone had been found hours later by the Israeli military — allowing the family to hope that they may not have been killed but rather the couple may have been taken captive among over 220 Israelis taken hostage during Hamas’ savage surprise attack.

On Thursday Oct 30, Ofri had left her home in Israel and got on a one-way flight to Newark International Airport, with hopes of garnering aid from lawmakers in upstate NY and in Capitol Hill.  Per the Post, Ofri was able to set up meetings with several lawmakers— and notably with Rep. Pat Ryan (D-NY) — to ask them to help in any way to get the hostages back home.  Rep Ryan said that the meeting really hit a personal note for him.

“My wife is Jewish, so it’s just been very personal for us to make sure that we get every single hostage home, to make sure we do everything we can to bring them home,” he told the Post. The congressman added that he and his wife had visited Israel, near Nir Oz, just two months prior to the attack.