Ziv Frenkel, 22, from Kiryat Motzkin, was murdered by Hamas terrorists at the Supernova music festival on October 7.
She attended the rave with her best friend, Lin Dafni, who was also murdered that day, as was a third friend, Moriya Raviv. When the rocket fire began, Ziv texted her father about what was happening, but said she was fine and, “Don’t tell Mom anything.” Several hours later, Ziv texted her mom from Lin’s phone saying: “Mom, we’re in a terror attack, I love you.”
That was the last anyone heard from either Ziv or Lin, who were considered missing for close to a week. The inseparable best friends were buried side by side in Kibbutz Ein Hamifratz in back-to-back funerals on October 15.
Ziv is survived by her parents, Daniel and Reuven (Ruvik), and her younger siblings Omri, 19, and Maya, 12.
She loved to travel, saving highlights of her recent destinations — Athens, Sinai, Mexico, Colombia, Ecaudor, Guatemala, Panama and more — on her Instagram page. After her mandatory service, which she completed in the police force, Ziv went on a five-month trip abroad to South America with Lin. They returned in May 2023 and she started to work as a waitress at the Roots restaurant in Acre. She was planning to work for a year and save up before starting studies in accounting in 2024.
On a memorial site, her parents described her as a “kind and moral girl, with cascading hair, shy and skinny, who grew up and became a girl full of self-confidence, who was always surrounded by friends. She would protect the weak and fight for them stubbornly, a warrior for justice who didn’t allow anyone to harass them,” they wrote, recalling how in high school she led a fundraising effort to give a gift card to the school janitor to buy new clothes. “She filled the lives of those around her with joy and light.”
Her younger brother, Omri, wrote to “my Ziv, my big sister, my role model, my inspiration. You always were and always will be my big sister, whose life was cut short at 22.”
“If you can hear me from up there, I want you to know that my love for you has no bounds,” he added. “You always knew how to be there for me, to worry about me, to write to me. Every time I was at work until late you would get annoyed and call or text me asking where I am. Only now, sadly, have I learned to appreciate all the little things you did for me, that you supported me, listened to me, knew how to say the right thing.”
Her boyfriend, Niv Gavriel, wrote online that the couple had a “fairy tale love story.”
“We met at work, she was the most beautiful waitress I’d seen in my entire life. I’ll never forget the moment I entered the restaurant and saw her, and life just stopped, for five minutes I couldn’t take my gaze off her,” he wrote. “And since then, for four years, the only thing I wanted was to see her smile.”
For the past four years, he wrote, “Ziv made sure to show me how good the world is through her perspective, how important it is to be with family and to check up on them, how important it is to listen to others no matter who they are, and how important it is to know how to forgive because everyone deserves a second chance.”
Her family said they were struggling to come to terms with her brutal murder so close to home.
“Ziv was a talented girl, a champion who achieved every goal she set for herself in the best way,” her mother, Daniel, told a local news outlet, noting that she received an award for excellence while serving in the police during her mandatory IDF service. “She was an athlete and hardworking. Over the past year she took life by storm, during her travels she did every extreme [sport] she could, bungee jumping, climbing a volcano, the Carnivale and parties.”
“Ziv traveled around the world and came home safe,” her mother added. “And here, in our home in the Land of Israel, she was brutally murdered. It hurts and I can’t come to terms with it.”
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