Around 10:30 a.m. Saturday, Doron Asher Katz called her husband. The 34-year-old was visiting her mother in Kibbutz Nir Oz, a communal settlement in southern Israel, along with her two daughters, two-year-old Aviv and five-year-old Raz. “I got a call saying they were locked in the security room,” her husband, Yoni Asher, said in a telephone interview. Hamas fighters broke into the family’s home.
Her mother’s partner left the safe room to try to talk to the intruders, she told her husband. The attempt at negotiation was unsuccessful. Militants took him away, Doron said. “I interrupted the call because I didn’t want her to be loud,” Asher said.
That was her last call. Asher later checked the geolocation of his wife’s cell phone using his laptop, where her email address was still logged in. “I saw it was in Gaza,” Asher said.
Then came the TikTok. A nine-second video captured a woman and two children – clearly frightened – in the back of a pickup truck. It was shared widely on Saturday afternoon.
“I recognized her immediately,” he said. “I knew then for sure that they were prisoners.”
Asher identified his wife and daughter Raz in her purple dress, surrounded by men in military vests. He believes that a second girl sheltered under his wife’s arms is Aviv, but he could not recognize her face. The Washington Post was unable to independently verify the location where the video was taken.
In the days since, Asher has been unable to locate any of his five family members who were in the house at the time of the attack – including his mother-in-law Efrat Kat, 70, and her partner Gadi Moses. 79. He says Israeli military officials told him it was “highly likely” that his wife, who also has German citizenship, and his daughters were trapped in the Gaza Strip. “I don’t think I need to describe to parents how this feels,” he said.