In the summer of 2014, at the age of six, at the height of Israel’s war with Gaza during Operation Protective Edge, Shira Perez left her home in South Africa to move to Israel with her parents, sister, and two older brothers.
“I remember crying to my mom, asking her why we were moving here; it was so scary,” Shira, now a 16-year-old high school student, recalls.
“But then we got used to the rockets and running to the bomb shelter. The way I’ve been able to deal with it has truly come from the way my parents raised me; our belief in God and Zionism has helped me deal with this,” she says, speaking from her home in Yad Binyamin, with a clarity and maturity beyond her years.
Shira’s father, Rabbi Doron Perez, gently holds her hand as her family continues to remain fractured following the abduction of her brother Daniel, 22, who was on active duty near the border community of Nahal Oz on October 7.
A few years older than his little sister, Daniel had just celebrated his bar mitzvah in South Africa before immigrating to Israel. As a teenager, the challenge of leaving his home and friends behind was certainly difficult, but Daniel’s outgoing and infectious personality quickly helped him overcome those trepidations.
“If I had to guess which of our kids would have had the hardest aliyah, I would have said Daniel, but he had the easiest,” his father says.
“From day one, he went around the neighborhood on his bicycle and came home with a new friend. From then on, he integrated very well,” says Doron, highlighting how his son straddles both worlds within the global Jewish community – in Israel and his friends in the Diaspora, with whom he has continued to remain close throughout high school and after joining the IDF.
Embodying modern Judaism and Zionism
Taking after his father, who serves as executive chairman of the Mizrachi World Movement, Daniel embodies the essence of modern-day Judaism and Zionism. Growing up with a strong adherence to both religion and Jewish nationalism, Daniel has a social outreach that extends to people covering the spectrum of Jewish life – religious and secular, Israeli and South African, as well as others from around the world.
In addition to his love for his family, friends, and community, Daniel has a passion for extreme sports.
“If it’s not high octane, he’s not interested,” says Doron. “He had wanted a motorbike or a quad bike, but we didn’t want him doing anything that we felt was dangerous, so thankfully he found wakeboarding,” an understandable resolution for any good Jewish parent.
Standing in Daniel’s room, Doron pauses as he stares at his son’s wakeboard hanging proudly on his wall.
“He became this unbelievable wakeboarder, frequenting [the lake at] Menachem Begin Park in Tel Aviv. He’ll go off the ramp and do a 360 flip.”
And while Daniel’s parents had assumed wakeboarding to be one of the least dangerous options for the adrenaline enthusiast, it still did not prevent him from damaging his knee, tearing the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) while flying off a ramp.
AFTER THE accident, Daniel’s dreams of following his older brother, Yonatan, as an elite IDF paratrooper appeared shattered, but his determination to serve his country with dignity and honor was undeterred. After nine months of physical therapy and rehabilitation, Daniel continued to work hard at an athletic rehabilitation center to raise his military profile for eligibility for the IDF Armored Corps, excelling during his training and eventually becoming a tank commander.
Reflecting on the impact of the IDF, which extends well beyond military training and drills, Doron explains, “There is a maturity when you enter the army, the discipline and responsibility. He would come home from the army and help clean up straight away, which is something he never did before. He was so much more helpful around the house and so much more appreciative.”
Doron pauses, looks around his son’s bedroom at the symbols of all he has accomplished in just 22 years, and opens a box of Daniel’s belongings retrieved from his base after Oct. 7. Inside is a journal that Daniel kept, unbeknown to his family, where he would write his thoughts and reflections while on base.
Doron gently embraces Shira as their eyes swell with tears reading the deeply profound writings of his missing son. In just a few pages, Daniel captures the moral understanding of the responsibilities of an IDF commander, the gravity of his mission to defend the State of Israel, his ethical obligations, and his respect for his fellow soldiers.
Daniel’s room remains exactly as he left it a few days before Oct. 7 when he returned to his base on Nahal Oz, just across the border from Gaza. He had been anxiously waiting to return home for his brother Yonatan’s wedding on October 17 when sirens wailed across the country and Hamas terrorists ambushed his base.
Daniel immediately ran to his tank and fought valiantly, saving the lives of many of his fellow soldiers, as well as civilians. Eventually, his tank was surrounded by terrorists, and he was taken hostage.
Yonatan was also called up that day, leaving his fiancée and family at home, to fight near Daniel’s base until he was shot in the thigh and taken to Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba.
Not seeing Daniel’s tank on the base, Yonatan understood that his brother was also engaged in defending the surrounding communities.
For three weeks, Daniel’s family received no information on whether he was even alive until additional evidence suggested that he had been abducted and was being held hostage in Gaza. Circumstantial evidence from his cellphone location, along with other indications, such as blood found near his tank’s location, were enough to declare that Daniel had been taken hostage. Since then, the family has had no further information about his whereabouts.
THIS UNFATHOMABLE ordeal is every parent’s nightmare as they prepare their 18-year-old children to go off to defend their country; yet somehow Doron and his daughter have remained proactive, using Daniel’s tragic situation to galvanize support from around the world. As the chairman of the Mizrachi World Movement, Doron has been using his platform to connect Jews from all sectors around the world, many of whom see themselves in the Perez family, and to strengthen Jewish and Zionist identity in communities throughout the Diaspora.
Meanwhile, Shira has been using the worst period of her young life to inspire and connect with young Jews around the world, traveling to New York just a few weeks after her brother’s abduction to speak to Jewish students at seven schools, and returning to the United States a few weeks ago to speak at another 10 schools in Ohio and Florida.
“I meet parents who come on solidarity groups [to Israel], and they tell me ‘My daughter heard your daughter speak at our school, and it was life-changing,’” Doron says proudly as Shira sits next to him, providing her father with the inner strength that has allowed them to continue their daily lives while fighting for the return of the hostages and bringing to the forefront the plight of the families of the abducted soldiers.
Turning their pain into a focal point that has rallied Jewish communities worldwide, Doron and Shira attribute their surprisingly composed optimism to their faith in the State of Israel and in God.
“This war represents the hardest thing I have ever been through. One would think that an experience like this would bring out a lot of anger at everyone – at God, the government, and everything. But it actually brought out the opposite,” Shira says in the reassuring voice that has brought comfort to those closest to her and to others she has never met.
“I think a lot of it [can be] attributed to my faith. When I started to see this change within myself, it gave me the power and strength to get up and go to school every day because I know that if I could talk to Daniel for even 30 seconds, he would tell me not to give up on my life and my goals,” she says.
“He would want me to live for him, to smile because that is who Daniel is. He celebrates friends; he celebrates life – and making the most of it – and always being positive.”