Israeli family from Regina fears for missing relative

The war between Israel and Hamas rages on, and the death toll is in the thousands.

An Israeli family that once lived in Saskatchewan is worried about a missing relative, who they haven’t heard from since Saturday when the fighting first broke out.

The Lapidot family last spoke to 23-year-old Tiferet on Saturday morning when Hamas militants launched a surprise attack on Israel.

The Lapidots, who are Jewish, do not typically use phones on the Sabbath, the seventh day of the week and Judaism’s day of rest.

“At about 1 o’clock my phone rang, and it’s highly unusual because nobody calls us; everybody knows we’re religious,” said Harel Lapidot, Tiferet’s uncle.

“Nobody calls us (during) Sabbath, so when the phone is ringing I understood that something is wrong. Something went terribly wrong.”

Tiferet’s older sister was the one who called Harel, to inform him about an earlier phone call Tiferet had made, telling her mother about the attack at a music festival she was attending near the Gaza Strip.

According to Harel, she was hiding in a bush when she made the phone call.

“Since then, we haven’t heard from her,” Harel said. “Her phone went off. She said she doesn’t have any battery.”

Harel said police managed to trace the signal of her phone to Gaza.

“It’s like a nightmare. We can’t sleep at night,” Harel said.

Her family believes there’s a chance she might have been taken hostage.

“We still don’t know what happened, and where is she, and if she’s injured, if she’s alive, nothing,” Harel said.

Harel and his brother Ohad – Tiferet’s father – were both born in Regina. Their family spent some time in Calgary as well before both moved to Israel.

Now, the two Canadian-Israeli citizens want to see Ottawa doing whatever it can to ensure the safe return of hostages with ties to Canada.

Harel said he’s encouraged by Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly’s trip to Israel amid Canada’s recently announced plan to evacuate Canadian citizens.

“(The federal government) is doing whatever they can do, and I want to thank them. It was very important for us,” he said.

“The only thing that I want is to hug her again. She grew up just near us. We live a few blocks from each other, and she’s just like my own child.”

Humanitarian crisis

Since declaring war on Sunday, Israel has cut off Gaza from food, fuel and water, saying the narrow piece of land next to the Mediterranean Sea would be placed under “complete siege.”

Israel has dropped at least 6,000 bombs on the area as of Friday, worsening an already dire situation as humanitarian experts say Gaza will soon run out of food, water and electricity.

As of Friday, more than 1,300 people have been killed in Israel – according to the Israel Defense Force – while more than 1,500 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.