Revealing the final texts of an American-Israeli family killed by Hamas

News

Israel war 2023

by Rich Calder

An American-Israeli family of six killed by Hamas gunmen on October 7 texted relatives that they had made it to safety, and then sent heartbreaking messages in their final minutes when they were killed in their home.

“They are here. They are burning us. We are suffocating,” Yonatan (Johnny) Kedem Siman Tov texted his sister Rani Butler, who lives in Israel, The Independent newspaper reported.

Tov, his wife Tamar Kedem Siman Tov, 35, and their three children – 6-year-old twins Shahar and Arbel, and 4-year-old son Omar – as well as his mother Carol Siman Tov, 70, were all there. He was killed in the family home in Nir Oz, a kibbutz on the outskirts of Gaza.

The family fled to “safe rooms” after Hamas fighters fired a barrage of rockets. Once inside, they texted family and friends that they were safe.

“Hey guys, we’ve arrived at the shelter at our house, we’re all good,” Tamar texted a loved one.

But after an hour the messages stopped.

Hamas fighters had stormed their home and shot them in their safe room.

“Our hearts are broken,” family friend Yishai Lacob wrote on Facebook. the sun.

“An entire family was murdered by vicious killers who shot the children and parents simply because they were Jewish. This is just one story, among many. “It is unbearable.”