Gili Adar

Gili Adar, 24, from the town of Lapid, was murdered by Hamas terrorists at the Supernova music festival on October 7.

She went to the rave with her friend, Avraham Tiberg, who was also slain there by Hamas.

Her father, Eldad, told Channel 13 news that Gili tried to flee the party but police turned her back, telling her that there was an infiltration of terrorists close by. She called her friend who was also fleeing and told her to avoid that area, saving her life, he said.

Eldad said Gili kept texting the family until around 9:15 a.m., telling them that she was hiding near the partygrounds, as gunshots closed in around them. Not long after, she stopped answering.

He said he immediately headed south toward the Gaza border to search for her, bypassing police barricades and even embedding with army convoys but was unable to find her. Three days later, the family was informed that her body had been found.

She was buried on October 11 near Modiin. She is survived by her parents, Orna and Eldad, and her older sister, Adi.

Her parents told La’Isha magazine that Gili, a longtime scout leader, spent a year volunteering for national service, working during the day with children with special needs, and in the evening meeting with young American Jews to instill them with Zionist pride.

She served in the IDF as an artillery instructor, and after her release she set off on a big trip to South America, returning in May 2023. She started working through the scouts as an aide to lone soldiers coming from abroad to ease them through the enlistment process.

Her parents described her to La’Isha as “a girl of happiness and laughter, joy for life incarnate! Someone eulogized her and said, ‘She wasn’t a ray of light, she was the sun!'”

For years she worked and volunteered with the scouts, including leading their delegations overseas. Gili spent a summer in 2017 working as a counselor at Camp Ben Frankel, a sleepaway Jewish summer camp in Makanda, Illinois, as a delegate from the scouts’ movement and also worked in 2019 and 2022 at Camp Tel Yehudah, a Jewish summer camp in New York.

The director of Camp Ben Frankel, Aaron Hadley, told a local news site that “she was there with messages of peace and happiness and was a real ray of light.”

“She was a source of joy and humor, clever, and she cared. She was someone who wanted to make the world a better place by volunteering and working with kids, and that’s about as noble as it comes in my book,” Hadley said.

Her friend Shira Samorai, who attended the rave with Gili and managed to escape, wrote on Facebook that “anyone who ever met Gili knows what we’re talking about, and those who did not — wow you missed out, oh how you missed out.”

“Many words can be said about this beautiful sunshine, but you can’t really understand what an incredible girl she was, the most beautiful soul, the rarest breed, a well of endless energy, a smile monster, an evil genius and somehow a role model of such values.”

Her father told La’Isha, “We always knew Gili was what people call ‘the salt of the earth.’ But during the shiva [mourning period] for her, we learned more and more. It’s so sad that the enormous potential of a perfect girl like her went down the drain. It’s a huge loss for the family, for Israeli society and for humanity.”

Her mother Orna told the Kan public radio station that since her death, “We have received from all around the world [news of] all sorts of initiatives and memorials to Gili and evenings held in her memory.”

“People really love happy people, and people who are fun to be with, and who lift you up — Gili was a truly, truly happy person,” Orna recounted. “She was always happy and always merry and always uplifting, always with her contagious laughter — a loved and loving person.”
Source: The Times of Israel