Mark Mordechai Peretz

Mark Mordechai Peretz, 51, from Rishon Lezion, was murdered on October 7 while trying to save his daughter from the Supernova music festival.

His daughter, Maya, was attending the rave near the Gaza border with friends when Hamas terrorists attacked.

His son Gilad told Business Insider that his father tried to race to the scene to rescue her when he heard of the Hamas invasion after speaking to Maya, who was afraid as she tried to escape.

“I called him and tried to convince him to come back, but he’s very stubborn,” said Gilad. “When it comes to anything related to his kids, he never gives up.”

While on the phone with his father shortly before 9 a.m., Gilad said he heard Mark shout, “No, I’m Israeli, I’m Israeli. Don’t shoot me!” before the line went dead. The family believes he encountered Hamas terrorists dressed in IDF uniforms and did not realize until it was too late.

Mark was considered missing for close to a week until his body was found and identified. He was buried on October 13 in Rishon Lezion.

Mark, a deputy director at the Freshmarket supermarket chain, is survived by his wife, Nirit, and his children Gilad, Tomer and Maya — who managed to survive the rave — as well as his mother, Gisele and brothers David and Yitzhak.

“He’s just the best person in the world. He didn’t even think twice before he left the house [that] morning,” his daughter-in-law, Jessica Cohen, told The New York Post. “His whole heart is his family.”

Maya told a local news outlet that she tried to convince her father to stay put on that day, but he would not be deterred: “He wouldn’t give up and did everything to save me.”

“He’s a person who has taken care of his family his whole life, his mother, his brothers, his cousins — anyone with a problem calls my dad first because he’s someone who knows how to solve everything,” she said. “I’m not just saying that — he didn’t just go out that morning to save me for no reason, that’s who he is, a person who saves everyone around him.”

Maya described a loving and embracing father who was always supportive of his three children.

“My father was a protective man, he and my mother Nirit enveloped us our whole lives,” she said. “Dad always took care of the three of us, we’d never return home to an empty house, he and Mom would always wait up for us. We would go to him with every problem or difficulty.”

Her parents, she said, were a loving couple: “For Dad, my mother was the most beautiful woman in the world, a perfect creation. Sometimes he would call me just to ask me to send a photo of her. He was her first and only love, they were a match made in heaven, a couple that people would say were ‘glue’ because they were always together… He was her whole life.”
Source: The Times of Israel