Judih Weinstein Haggai, a 70-year-old who was believed to have been taken hostage by Hamas, was actually killed during the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, her family and Kibbutz Nir Oz said in statements on Thursday.
Ms. Haggai’s husband, Gadi Haggai, had also been listed as a hostage but the Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum announced last week that he, too, was killed in the attacks.
The forum said the couple were shot while on their morning walk through the fields of the kibbutz, and that Ms. Haggai had managed to inform friends that they had been injured, her husband critically so.
Ms. Haggai was, in fact, fatally wounded, and her death has now been confirmed, Kibbutz Nir Oz said on Thursday. Its statement did not specify how it learned that she had died in the attack.
The couple’s bodies are being held by Hamas, according to the kibbutz, their family and the Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum. The groups said the couple were citizens of both Israel and the United States, and that Ms. Haggai also had Canadian citizenship.
President Biden said he and Jill Biden, the first lady, were holding the couple’s “four children, seven grandchildren and other loved ones close to our hearts.”
“I will never forget what their daughter, and the family members of other Americans held hostage in Gaza, have shared with me,” he said in a statement. “They have been living through hell for weeks.”
Ms. Haggai would be remembered “for the creative life she built with her husband,” her family said, adding that “their murders are a reminder for leaders everywhere to bring the hostages home now before it is too late.”
