The mayor of the evacuated northern Israeli city of Kiryat Shmona became a father for the second time, on the 100th day of the war against Hamas, but he saw the birth on the screen of his cellphone from thousands of miles away. Sveta, wife of Mayor Avichai Stern, gave birth to their second daughter in a hospital in New York.
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A few days before the war broke out, the mayor's parents and his wife flew to the United States with daughter Avigail, 3, to participate in the bar and bat mitzvah of the mayor's nephew and niece, Aaron and Eleanor, who live in New York.
Stern himself was supposed to join them shortly after, but due to the war he remained in the city - whose residents were evacuated a few days after October 7. No one expected at the time that the war would last so long and his wife, who was in an advanced stage of pregnancy, remained abroad.
At midnight between Saturday and Sunday, the mayor received a WhatsApp video call in which he was told that he was going to watch the birth of his daughter.
"This is the most exciting WhatsApp call I've ever received," Stern said. "I am happy that we expanded the family and even happier that everything went smoothly and that my wife and little daughter are feeling well."
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Kiryat Shmona Mayor Avichai Stern; A building in Kiryat Shmona hit by a rocket fired from Lebanon
"It pains me that I was not physically present at the birth, which is a powerful and exciting occasion, but we are in a war and we will do everything to win and allow my daughter and all the children of Israel to live in a quieter and safer place," added the mayor of Kiryat Shmona.
"I hug from here my heroine wife who is far away from me with our two daughters, and I will do everything to bring them home as soon as possible because I miss them very much and want more than anything in the world to hug and kiss them," he concluded.