‘An ongoing nightmare’: Toronto woman living in Israel missing after Hamas attack, daughter says

The daughter of a woman from Toronto who has been living in Israel has been missing since Hamas launched its attack on the country almost two weeks ago.

Iris Haggai Liniado told AM640 Toronto host Alex Pierson she has not spoken to her mother Judih Weinstein Haggai, known as Judy, since the attack on Oct. 7.

AM640 is part of the Corus Entertainment radio network. Corus is the parent company of Global News.

Liniado said Haggai was out for her usual early morning walk with her husband in Nir Oz, Israel — located just east of the southern part of the Gaza Strip — when there was a “red alert.”

She said her mother told her in a group chat that “it’s not good.”

“They’re laying face down on the fields and that there are hundreds of rockets over their heads and also they can hear gunshots,” Liniado said, recounting her mother’s text.

She asked her mother, who said she was two kilometres away from home, to text back when they made it home safely.

That was the last time she heard from her.

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Liniado said she spoke to paramedics the day after and was told her parents were shot by Hamas fighters who were on a motorcycle. The paramedic told her that her father was very severely wounded but her mother was OK. The paramedic was unable to send an ambulance because Hamas fighters had already shot the vehicle’s tires, Liniado said.

Global News has not independently verified the information Liniado said was provided from the paramedic.

Haggai was a retired teacher in Toronto but had been living with her husband in Israel. She was born in the U.S. and had grown up in Toronto with a few relatives. Haggai is an American, Canadian and Israeli and Liniado said she has been speaking with all three governments for the search efforts.

Liniado currently lives with her family — her husband and three children — in Singapore.

Liniado also said her mother was very into health, mindfulness and meditation having created an app for children. She also taught and wrote poetry and was part of a large online community.

The Oct. 7 attack saw more than 1,400 people in Israel killed and at least 199, including children, were captured by Hamas and taken into Gaza, according to Israeli authorities.

According to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry on Wednesday, 3,478 Palestinians have been killed and more than 12,000 injured in the past 11 days due to retaliatory airstrikes from Israel.

“It feels like we’re going back to World War II, if I’m honest,” Liniado said. “We as Jews … we are traumatized by what happened to us during that time. And we do have that feeling that it’s happening again right now.“

Although Liniado said she can’t be certain her parents were kidnapped, she did say the Israeli government told her “that they think my parents were kidnapped but only because they found their location of their phones in Gaza.”

She said she knows of friends who survived who had their phones stolen, which are now in Gaza.

“It’s just a huge question mark,” she said.

Liniado said the waiting for official confirmation if they survived or if they were killed and not knowing what happened to her parents is horrible.

“It’s just unfathomable,” Liniado continued. “I think of each person that was kidnaped, I know 80 of them. I think about the people who were murdered, I know all of them from my kibbutz.”

— with files from The Canadian Press

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