TEL AVIV — The last thing Ido Nagar heard his wife say was, “Soldiers are coming.”
It was Saturday morning, and Celine Ben David Nagar had been on her way to join the musical festival in Israel that turned into a massacre when Hamas terrorists descended onto the event, killing at least 260 people and taking dozens hostage.
Heartbroken, Nagar, 33, immediately faced a problem very close to home — how to care for the couple’s 6-month-old baby, Ellie, who Ben David Nagar, 32, had been breastfeeding.
That’s when his community rallied.
Since Saturday, Nagar, a lawyer, has been flooded with support from neighbors and relatives, with many dropping off more than enough to feed Ellie.
“A lot of people from all over brought us a lot of milk,” he said, adding that he has enough for now.
“They filled all the fridges with milk,” he said.
“My wife has a lot of friends, a lot of supporters,” Nagar added.
The ray of hope and support is helping him live through a minute-by-minute nightmare as he searches for answers about Ben David Nagar, who works with at-risk youth and had been driving into southern Israel from Holon, south of Tel Aviv.
She was in a car with two friends when she called her husband to say that sirens were sounding and they were turning back. She called turning back a “mistake” and that armed men were on the road.
That’s when his desperate search for answers began.
On Sunday, after trying to trace his wife’s footsteps, Nagar found her car by himself. Bullet holes were visible on the driver’s side of the vehicle, its windows were smashed. Some blood lay outside the car.
“I’m assuming that they were taken by Hamas,” Nagar said.
“You can’t imagine what I’m feeling right now. I’m hopeless. There’s uncertainty in everything,” he said. “You don’t know what to do. You live by the second just waiting for the call to tell you what’s happening.”
He dwells on how they met four years ago — it was “love at first sight.” They had known each other for just three days before they started dating, marrying two years later.
Six months ago, they welcomed their first child into the world.
“She’s the love of my life,” he said of Ben David Nagar. “We had such a perfect ... we have such a perfect marriage.”
Still, he said, Ellie “needs her mother.”
“I really hope that she’s safe and I really hope that we get information as soon as possible,” he said. “I really hope that we get her back.”
