An Israeli tech billionaire whose daughter was murdered by Hamas on Oct. 7 said he still believes there will be “peace” in the region – but only after all the terrorists are “eliminated.”
Eyal Waldman, who is also an Israeli military veteran, told the BBC he remains optimistic even after his “amazing” 24-year-old daughter Danielle was murdered “for no reason” alongside her fiance and hundreds of others at the Supernova music festival.
“I hope in two to four years we’ll be able to [have] peace and build two states for the two people and be able to live together next to each other,” the grieving dad of Israel and Gaza.
“But before that, anyone that was responsible — anyone that was associated — with what happened on October 7, ’23 will be eliminated.
“And we will take care of that,” Waldman vowed.
“We know exactly who came, who raped, who butchered. We have videos, we have their cell phone numbers. We know who they are.
“We can eliminate them. And I think we can eliminate Hamas,” he said confidently.
Only then can they focus on doing “everything we can to make this place the best place to live in,” said Waldman, who maintained he had no regrets in creating a design center and donating nearly $300,000 to a hospital in Gaza.
“We need to change leadership on both sides,” he said. “And we need to stop killing each other and find a way to live together.”
Danielle Waldman and her boyfriend of six years, Noam Shai, were murdered by the terrorists while they and three friends were attempting to drive away from the music festival bloodbath.
A brief video showed Shai driving away in a Jeep as his girlfriend sits in the back next to a man who says, Waldmanher in the back seat of a Jeep with a friend who tried to reassure them: “We will be alright. Everything is okay, right?”
Her dad – who founded the chip maker Mellanox Technologies and sold the company to Nvidia for $6.8 billion in 2019 – had been in Indonesia at the time, but got permission to land in Israel even though the airspace was locked down.
He later tracked his daughter’s Apple Watch and phone, stumbling across some of the carnage.
“We were close to an engagement with seven terrorists, creatures, call them what you want,” he told the BBC. “They had killed three or four soldiers.”
Waldman eventually came across the bullet-ridden car that his daughter and her friends had been in.
“There was a lot of blood inside the car. I was hoping she wasn’t in the car, or that she was wounded but was able to escape, or was taken hostage,” the grieving father explained.
His daughter’s body was found two days later.
“Everything [Danielle] touched was with a smile. She never did anything wrong to anyone. She just loved doing good things. And they [Hamas] just murdered her for no reason,” Waldman said tearfully.
“She was an amazing girl. She loved to dance. She loved animals. She loved people. She had many, many friends. She loved to snowboard, to scuba dive, to go on a motorcycle with Noam,” he added.
Just 10 days before Danielle was killed, she talked to her father about her plans to marry her boyfrienmd.
“They were going to live in the country, raising kids. She wanted many kids and a lot of dogs and horses,” the grieving dad said.
Instead, both sets of parents “decided to bury them together — instead of getting married.”