A recently retired Brandeis professor said he was on the phone with his daughter in Israel the moment she was killed by Hamas gunfire.
Ilan Troen, an Israeli scholar and professor emeritus at Brandeis, told “CNN This Morning” on Monday that he was having a conversation with his daughter, Deborah Matias, when terrorists forced their way into her home and killed her while she was shielding her 16-year-old son. Shlomi, Matias’s husband and Troen’s son-in-law, was also killed during the attack.
“The terrorists came into their place, broke through the doors, shot them,” Troen told CBS News Boston.
Matias’s son managed to survive the attack and find a place to hide, Troen said.
“We were on the phone the entire day with our grandson, Rotem, as he lay first under her body, and then found a place to escape under a blanket in a laundry,” Troen told CNN, later clarifying that he was texting with his grandson throughout the day.
“He was told not to speak and therefore he was to hide and use texting,” Troen said. “By the time he was rescued, he had 4% left in his battery.”
“The brunt of the shot was borne by his mother,” Troen said, calling his daughter a “child of light and life.”
“My grandson has witnessed the murder of his mother by people who rehearsed what they were doing,” he told CBS.
Troen said that his daughter decided to become a musician and attended the Berkeley College of Music in Boston and the Rimon School of Music in Tel Aviv, where she met her husband.
“She, rather than becoming a scientist or a physician, she said to me one day, ‘Dad, I have to do music, because it’s in my soul,'” Troen said.
Troen is the Karl, Harry, and Helen Stoll Professor of Israel Studies, Emeritus. He is also the founding director of Brandeis’ Schusterman Center of Israel Studies. He grew up in Massachusetts, attended Brandeis as an undergraduate, and received his Masters and Ph.D. at the University of Chicago.
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Other reports of family tragedies have poured in since Hamas attacked Israel, which has killed at least 700 Israelis. Israeli activist Yoseph Haddad reported on X that parents Itai and Hadar Berdichevsky were able to hide their 10-month-old twins in a shelter before the couple was gunned down by Hamas terrorists who entered their home.
Itai and Hadar Berdichevsky were shot and killed after a struggle by the vile Hamas terrorists who broke into their home. Before that, they still had time to hide their two 10-month-old twin babies in the shelter.
The babies were left alone crying for 14 hours until they were… pic.twitter.com/cW4Joxdk97— יוסף חדאד – Yoseph Haddad (@YosephHaddad) October 9, 2023
Naftali Bennet, Israel’s former prime minister, reported that a family of five, including two 6-year-old girls and a 4-year-old boy, were also killed by terrorists over the weekend.
An entire family murdered in cold blood.
Kedem family: Father Jonathan, mother Tamar, 6-year-old girls Shachar and Arbel, and 4-year-old boy Omer.
Look at their happy faces.
Their love.All of them murdered by Palestinian terrorists at Nir-oz kibbutz.
Just because they’re… pic.twitter.com/Y8yvGtHUDi— Naftali Bennett בנט (@naftalibennett) October 8, 2023