Israeli police released the names of the four victims of a terrorist attack at the Sarona Market in Tel Aviv on Wednesday evening.
Ido Ben Ari, 42, from Ramat Gan; Ilana Naveh, 39, from Tel Aviv; Michael Feige, 58, from Ramat Gan; and Mila Mishayev, 32, from Rishon Lezion were killed when two terrorists opened fire inside a restaurant in the shopping complex.
Sixteen others were injured, and three remain in serious condition in the intensive-care unit at the nearby Ichilov Hospital, along with one of the attackers, who was shot by security forces. A second terrorist was also captured and is in police custody.
Ido Ben Ari, a father of two, was a senior manager for the Coca-Cola company in Israel and had served in the elite Sayeret Matkal unit of the Israel Defense Forces, his sister told the Ynet news site. He was having dinner with his wife when the gunmen opened fire. His wife, also shot, is in moderate condition at the Ichilov Hospital. His funeral will take place at 6 p.m. in Yavne.
Mila Mishayev was waiting to meet her fiance at the restaurant for dinner. After she was shot, she managed to phone him as she was being rushed to the hospital, said the restaurant’s manager. Mishayev’s funeral is scheduled for 2 p.m. on Friday in Ashkelon.
Michael Feige was a professor of Israel studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. According to the school’s web site, he was a sociologist and anthropologist who “specialized in Israeli society, collective memory and political myth.” Funeral arrangements have not yet been announced.
Ilana Navah, a mother of four, was at the restaurant with friends celebrating her upcoming 40th birthday. “She was the best woman in the world,” one neighbor told Ynet. “She was devoted to her home and children, always made lunch for my own children when I was at work; her door was always open. I just spoke to her daughter who is 12, and just celebrated her bat mitzvah two months ago. I sent my own daughter to be with them because they do not even comprehend what happened.” Navah will be interred in the Petach Tikvah cemetary at 2 p.m. on Thursday.
In addition to words of comfort for the families of the deceased, prayers came from all over the country and the world for the speedy recovery of the injured. On the afternoon following the attack, bustling crowds returned to the Sarona Market, where they were joined by those from across the Israeli political spectrum, who came in support of a return to “business as usual.” It is the nation’s staunch reaction to terror.
Visiting the wounded at Ichilov Hospital, Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin told Assaf Bar—a Tel Aviv resident who was shot in the head during the attack, and who is in the intensive-care unit of the hospital’s neurosurgery department—that “you will enjoy many more happy and good times. We cannot let them get the better of us. I am going now to where you were injured yesterday. We will continue with our lives.”
Since October, 33 Israelis and four others have been killed, and hundreds more injured in a spate of terrorist attacks.
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