A day in the life of Jacqui Rivers-Vital

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Adi Vital-Kaploun invited family to her house on Kibbutz Holit for Shabbat on Oct. 6, an Israeli community a few kilometres from Gaza and the Egyptian border.

It was Simchat Torah — a time for celebration on the Jewish calendar, marking the end of the Torah reading cycle, and rejoicing as the process begins anew. Though fall was approaching, the heat in southern Israel hadn’t let up. It still hit temperatures in the thirties despite the breeze coming off the Mediterranean.

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Adi invited her sister, Ayala, who lived on Kibbutz Kissufim, another Gaza border community just south of Kibbutz Be’eri, Nahal Oz and Kfar Aza. Her father, Yaron, even drove the nearly two-hour drive from Jerusalem. After supper, Ayala went home. Adi told Yaron to stay the night in an empty guesthouse nearby because Eshel, her four-month-old baby boy, would cry and surely wake him up.

Jacqui Rivers Vital, Adi’s mother, couldn’t make it. She was visiting family in Canada — a country she emigrated from in 1974 — for the first time since the pandemic. She’d been in Toronto the week before, where she went to university, and was set to return to Israel on Oct. 8.

The Vital-Kaploun family went to bed that night and said goodbye to a different world. Reinforced by a Shabbat meal and warm company, they closed their eyes and slept until they were awoken to a new brutal reality.

Adi’s husband, Anani, woke up at 4:30 a.m. on Oct. 7 and joined a group of kibbutzniks for a sunrise hike and some breakfast. Adi and her two children, Eshel and three-year-old Negev stayed behind. They planned to meet up afterwards.

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Around 6:30 a.m., local time, air raid sirens began blaring across Israel as thousands of rockets were unleashed in an unprecedented attack. It only took a few seconds for these projectiles to hit one of the dozens of Israeli towns scattered across the region known as the Gaza Envelope.

It had become common for many who lived in these communities since Israeli forces withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, and Hamas forcibly took over in 2007, to run to bomb shelters during such attacks. Usually, residents stayed in safe rooms for ten or fifteen minutes, perhaps a few extra for added security, before returning to normal.

Yaron initially thought it was another everyday routine when he was awakened by what sounded like “thunder” on Oct. 7. Another attempt by Hamas to disturb the peace of a relaxing Shabbat afternoon. But the lull never came. Instead, he began to see terrorists on motorcycles trying to break into the kibbutz. As a visitor, he wasn’t in the community WhatsApp chat. He couldn’t communicate with those around him and locked himself in the safe room.

It’s almost a year later. It’s still a dream

He heard terrorists getting closer. They managed to breach the security walls and the shooting was growing louder by the minute. Yaron could hear the sounds of people begging for mercy, a spray of rifle fire, and then silence. He called Adi at 12:30 p.m., who insisted he stay put. One of the first people murdered was Moshe Ridler, a 92-year-old Holocaust survivor.

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That was the last time they ever spoke.

Jacqui woke up in Ottawa at 6:30 a.m., seven hours behind Israel time, to her phone convulsing with notifications and red alerts warning of imminent rocket strikes. She instantly called Yaron who told her what was happening but said they shouldn’t speak because a terrorist might overhear him.

“I went upstairs and said to my sister, something bad is happening in Israel. It’s near where the girls live,” Jacqui told National Post from her home in Jerusalem.

Eleven hours after the invasion began, Yaron was freed by Israeli soldiers. He then accompanied them to Adi’s house, which was quickly cleared. They told him it was safe to enter but warned, “there’s a dead body on the floor,” Vital recalls.

He feared it was Adi.

Entering the destroyed house, he saw the body of a man he didn’t recognize. Bullet holes riddled the walls. Spent casings of rifle ammunition littered the floor. The safe room looked “like Swiss cheese,” Vital remembers Yaron telling her. The soldiers couldn’t jar it open.

Yaron called Jacqui a few hours later with encouraging news. “The boys were safe,” she remembers her husband telling her. “They’d come back with the neighbour. But I didn’t know the whole story.”

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https://twitter.com/Jerusalem_Post/status/1712883595189104822

What Yaron was keeping from Jacqui was that their grandchildren Eshel and Negev were taken to the border of Gaza alongside Adi’s neighbour, Avital Alajem. Footage released by Hamas the following Friday, Oct. 13, showed the terrorists cradling Negev while rocking Eshel in a stroller after murdering Adi.

When Alajem’s house was attacked, a neighbour who was sheltering with her was murdered, while Alajem was taken alive. She was escorted on foot with Eshel and Negev to the Gaza border. After they were reportedly left alone for a few moments, Alajem walked nonchalantly to the two boys and started walking back to Israel. Footage of the moment went viral in Israel. Jacqui was unaware the moment was captured on film until the clip appeared on CNN on Monday, Oct. 9.

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Jacqui briefly thought that Adi was kidnapped and in Gaza. However, by Oct. 8, she was growing skeptical. Speaking with RCMP officers dispatched to investigate the case, since Adi was a Canadian citizen, she told them, “she’s not alive.”

“My sister’s house was like a shiva house without a shiva because people were coming all the time just to be with me. It’s like doom and glum but not for real,” she said, trailing off. “It’s almost a year later. It’s still a dream.”

The following day, Jacqui was informed that a subsequent military sweep of Holit opened Adi’s safe room window. Soldiers crawled through the opening and found her. “They saw her body underneath all the chaos in the safe room,” Vital told the Post. “They managed to pull her body out safely,” she continued, “but her body had been booby-trapped with about fifty grenades.”

Adi was identified by her wedding ring.

Jacqui believes Adi killed the terrorist in her house (where she had access to a rifle because her husband was part of Holit’s security team) and was slain defending her children in the safe room.

The following day, Jacqui flew to Israel via New York City and made funeral arrangements before Shabbat. About 1,500 people, Jacqui said, attended Adi’s funeral, so many that traffic backed up the highway between Beit Shemesh and Jerusalem. The October skies and rain opened up, Jacqui remembered, as the Vital-Kaploun family left the service and walked to the grave.

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She feels that the federal government, particularly Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, failed the eight Canadian-Israelis killed during the Hamas invasion. Visiting Parliament Hill on a mission with the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights in March, Jacqui recalled meeting Trudeau alongside Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly and Immigration Minister Marc Miller.

She confronted the Liberal Party leaders, asking them why they hadn’t spoken to her or advocated for Adi after learning that she was missing in the hours following the attacks. The only message she received from the Trudeau government came from Joly on Oct. 11, the day she left for Israel, noting that they “might” be able to help her get a flight to Greece, which she could use as a jumping-off point to Israel.

“Just as I was walking out the door to go to the airport,” Jacqui remembers, “I knew that she (Adi), that her body had been found, and I was on my way back to Israel. Mélanie Joly called me at 3 p.m. on Wednesday afternoon and said we might have a plane that can take you to Athens.

“I said, ‘You’re too late. I’m on my way to the airport.’ That was the help from the Canadian government. Zero.”

Jacqui is now part of two lawsuits against the Liberal government, including one focused on the Canadian government’s funding of the United Nations Reliefs and Works Agency (UNRWA), a UN organization sponsored to exclusively help Palestinians. Since October 7, the Israeli government has alleged members of the group participated in the atrocities and that employees, more broadly, are affiliated with Palestinian terror groups.

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