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Danielle was just 24 years old when she and her partner Noam Shay were brutally killed by Hamas at the Supernova Festival.

The daughter of Israeli tech billionaire, philanthropist and peace ambassador Eyal Waldman, 24-year-old Danielle inherited her father’s belief that Jews and Arabs could work together. He hired more than 200 Palestinian engineers at Mellanox, the technology company he co-founded in 1999 and led until 2020, believing that cooperation could lead to peace.

“Danielle was just like me. She believed we should strive for peace. She worked with me as often as possible,” recalls Eyal, who raised $360,000 in 2020 for an oncology ward at a hospital in Gaza.

“She always thought that doing good things for other people was the best way. She knew and was friends with many of my Palestinian friends, and she always thought about other people without thinking about herself. She helped so many people in her short life.”

Danielle was with her boyfriend, 26-year-old Noam Shay, at the Supernova music festival held near Kibbutz Re’im, near the Gaza border, when it was attacked by Hamas on October 7. Some 364 people were killed According to the Israeli police’s initial report on the attack, 40 were taken hostage by Hamas.

Danielle and Noam had met six years earlier when they were both serving in the Israeli military and had been inseparable ever since.

“They had just started talking about marriage,” Eyal explains. “But instead of a wedding, we had a funeral and buried her together.”

Many of the hundreds of Israeli, Palestinian citizens of Israel and foreigners murdered by Hamas militants at the Supernova music festival sent text and voice messages to their loved ones to say goodbye. But Eyal didn’t even have that.

“I couldn’t say goodbye to her. She sent a text at 6:30 a.m. to say she was OK. That was the last we heard from her. At least I have,” he says. “I also have a video of them sitting in the car before they were murdered and an audio recording of one of their friends being injured. But she was probably dead by then.”

“Danielle was incredible. She couldn’t hurt a fly and she loved everyone. Everyone who came in contact with her loved her too,” he says.

“My ex wife [Danielle’s mother] called me the other day to tell me that she dreamed about her wedding,” says Eyal, breaking into tears.

Despite his unbearable loss, Eyal says he has no regrets about working with the Palestinians and remains optimistic that the day will come when the two people will live together in peace. He also has reason to believe that the current war could prove to be a catalyst or trigger for reconciliation: “After that [Yom Kippur] After the 1973 war, we began the peace process with Egypt and signed an agreement with them. There’s no reason why this can’t happen again. We must resolve this conflict. We’ve been killing each other for 75 years.”

When asked about the memory of his daughter, the one he cares about most, he recalls a skiing vacation in France when Danielle spontaneously started dancing.

“She loved to dance. She danced the whole time,” he says. “I just posted a video from the day she danced in France and my three kids joined in. It was the song “Titanium,” which says, “I’m bulletproof.” It’s the best memory I have.”