For 47 days, the Gabay family from Yokneam lived in hope that their beloved Shani was alive and held by Hamas terrorists. Only her distinct crescent moon-shaped necklace, found by chance, revealed the chilling fact that she had not been kidnapped at all but rather buried by mistake with another victim of the October 7 attack.
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Shani Gabbai, a law school grad who interned in a prestigious firm in Tel Aviv and dreamed of working as a lawyer, worked as a bouncer at the Nova music festival to supplement her income.
Her older brother Aviel Gabay revealed gruesome details about Shani’s death that fateful Saturday that led to the unfortunate error.
CONTENT WARNING: DISTURBING DETAILS
"At seven in the morning, Shani called our mother and told her she was hiding in a shelter at Alumim Junction. Several grenades were thrown into the shelter, her friends lost consciousness, and with the last bit of her strength, she managed to escape back to the festival area,” he said.
“As she was running, she was shot twice in the left leg. Despite losing blood, she managed to return to the festival site, where she was given a tourniquet, and she reached a container where many people were hiding until the terrorists approached the area, and everyone started to flee.
“Shani fled with several other girls to an abandoned ambulance when the terrorists fired an RPG at the ambulance, killing all the girls hiding inside. From that moment, she stopped responding to us. My father went down to the site and searched for her for 5 days. He did not return home, from morning until night, he just searched for her, and unfortunately, he did not find her."
What did you do after the search failed?
"From there, we concluded that Shani was missing. There was no sign of life from her, and as days passed without her being found among the bodies, we began to believe she was kidnapped. We joined the Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum, held meetings around Israel and around the world with all decision-makers to bring back all the kidnapped and Shani home. We believed that Shani was abducted and thought about what she was going through in captivity."
'Without the necklace, she might've never been found'
For 47 days, the Gabays lived wholeheartedly that their daughter Shani was in the hands of Hamas terrorists, and they even dreamed of the party they would throw her when she returned home with the other hostages.
"One day, social workers, a doctor, military personnel and police officers came to us. The moment we saw them all, we understood what they were about to tell us. They confessed that they had made a huge mistake and had actually buried Shani in the first week of the war with another woman whom Shani did not know at all,” Aviel said.
“From the police, I understood that they found a charred necklace in the shape of a crescent moon at the party site near the ambulance where Shani was murdered, about a month after the murder. They conducted DNA tests on it and found a high concentration of DNA that matched Shani's, which we had previously provided to the police.
“They also found a lower concentration of another young woman's DNA on the necklace. They approached the second family to request to exhume her; the family consented, for which we are very grateful. Then they took the body found in the grave to [National Center of Forensic Medicine in Tel Aviv], conducted a CT scan and discovered two skulls. A dentist then examined the teeth of both girls and clearly identified them as Shani's.
"When they first buried her, they didn't conduct the thorough and comprehensive tests we would have expected. It seems that as a result of the RPG fire, the ambulance burned and the two bodies were found fused together.”
"On the 48th day, after we received final and decisive results that it was indeed Shani, we held a dignified funeral for my sister. She was buried on the anniversary of our grandfather's death, with whom she had a very close bond. We got up from shiva on her 26th birthday, which she never got to celebrate.
"We feel that there was a massive scandal here. I am angry at those who did the forensic examination and were responsible for the burial. Someone was negligent here. I know they did a tough job, saw horrors that you can’t sleep after, but still, when burying a body, I expect not just 100% certainty but a million percent and to know exactly whom they are burying.
"It's unthinkable that they buried a burned body and a dentist did not perform the basic examination. If it weren't for the necklace, Shani might’ve never been found. We would continue living with the feeling that she was kidnapped and then missing. Although we now have a grave to visit her, I fear this happened to more families and other missing persons.
"I appeal and ask everyone responsible for identifying the bodies to understand that this is a sensitive and important sacred task for families. You can’t cut corners or skip procedures; this is not the place."
Media reports indicate that since October 7, similar mistakes have made in the identification and burial of the victims.
For instance, Arik Peretz, who also attended the Nova festival, was buried together with his daughter Ruth. After learning about the error, both bodies were exhumed and buried again separately.
A similar error has reportedly happened with several other civilians, and in one case, even with two fallen IDF soldiers.
"Most of these errors could have been prevented with real-time CT analysis. Within the security, police and health systems, some suspect that not all cases have been uncovered and that some of the missing persons, despite Israel's significant efforts to determine their fates, were actually found but mistakenly buried with others,” according to a report in Ynetnews’s sister publication Yedioth Ahronoth.
Israel police said they “share in the great sorrow of the Gabay family and regret the distress caused to them."