Michal was the third child of Tal Dan Ruaimi, the "guru" of the insurance industry. A smaller model of her, "Mini Me" is upgraded. 22 years old when she died. A beautiful girl, crazy about dogs, an avid scout. In the infantry army at the "Kele David" base in the south, after the liberation she worked as a bartender at the "Bereshit" hotel and went on a half-year trip to South America. When she returned, she did reserve training, a casting course, worked at Eyal Shani's restaurant, and two weeks before October 7, she began the process of being accepted for the Rafael company.
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There was a special connection between them, a connection of souls. They traveled a lot together on foot, in jeeps, on both of their heavy motorcycles, and on Thursday, before Simchat Torah, Tal slept in Michal's roommate's apartment in Tel Aviv, after they had redecorated her room. "I returned home," says Tal. "I knew she was going down the next day to a party in Nova with four other friends. Three were murdered and two survived."
She has an agreement with her four children that once a day they send her a small message, what's going on, and that everything is fine, and she, in return, doesn't bully them. On Saturday morning she sleeps soundly. There were no alarms in the Eagle, so she had no idea what was happening on the other side of the country. At seven in the morning Michal sent her a message that everything was fine and there was nothing to worry about, and she went back to sleep. At eight there was another message, one word – "live".
"We opened a computer and got fever"
"I understand that something is happening, I call and there is no answer. I write messages and there is no answer. Then I get a message from her friend's phone: 'Everything is fine with us, Michal's phone has no reception, there are police with us.' We opened the computer and received heat. I call my friend and she Does not answer, sends her a message and asks her to send a location. They were found 30 meters from the Reim parking lot, the place of the party.
"My partner and I flew to Soroka. We thought everyone would flock there. I told my older children, 'Establish a military camp.' They called all the hospitals every hour, watched Hamas videos, were on Palestinian networks. The elder was in the coordinator of the operations in the territories, he speaks Arabic and the elder in intelligence, so they knew what to do."
On Sunday, two friends who survived contacted her, and said that the last time they saw her was at 8:30 in the morning, when they parted ways. They were in Soroka for three days, dubbing the survivors who arrived there by bus, and were unable to find anyone there who had seen Michal. They tried to get to the area themselves, but the security forces did not let them go inside. And when they announced that there were no more survivors, Tal decided that she was returning home to the children, who faced the impossible situation alone.
"We understood that either Michal was kidnapped, or she was murdered and if she was murdered, we have to wait for her body to arrive in Shora (Shora camp near Ramla – LR). For a week she was absent. We contacted the Mossad, the Shin Bet, and the police, until on Friday, at 6:30 p.m., casualty officers came and said she had been identified. Two hours later, I pick up the phone and they say to me: 'Are you sure Michal was murdered? Turn on Channel 12. Danny Kushmaro points to pictures of abductees and her picture there'."
"I didn't trust anyone"
They called Channel 12, Shura, everyone they could, to understand where the information came from and whether it was verified. "Until midnight there were calls at the level of screaming and nerves, until it turned out that it was a mistake by one of the editors. I said, that's it, I don't believe in anything anymore. We picked up the phone to Shura and shouted that I wanted to identify her. They agreed that I would get there on Saturday afternoon. I went there with the social worker of the municipality and with my older brother, who is a lawyer. I didn't trust anyone.
"When we arrived there was crazy chaos, they didn't agree to let me see the body. It turned out that they transferred her to Rashel'z, even though we arranged a grave plot near her father, in Gosher, and we didn't want a rabbinate. They put her back in line, the director general of the Ministry of Religion came there himself, and I saw her. She was burned. I was able to identify her by her teeth. I had to do the closure. I couldn't bury her without being sure it was her."
She says that in this horrible, shaking nightmare, the worst thing was the uncertainty. "The fact that I didn't know if she was alive, where she was, that finished me. And I will say something that is not politically correct. She was a beautiful girl, and as horrible as it is, I preferred that they say she was murdered and not kidnapped because I knew I would be dependent on the Israeli government and its dysfunction."
From her advanced age, 57, and her professional experience, she knows something about how bodies should function and how to improve and maximize their performance. This is what her business specializes in, "Ishio", where she gives business and organizational advice to companies and insurance agencies and mentors managers and CEOs in the field.
She entered the insurance industry in 1994 as a beginning clerk in the pension field, at one of the insurance agencies in Haifa, her hometown. "My agenda was to change places and occupations every three and a half to four years because this is the way to develop and grow. I worked in small, medium-sized agencies, mega companies, and for 17 years I was in management positions. In my last position as an employee, I was the CEO of an agency for managing financial arrangements Pensioners in the north, with 70 employees, the size of a district in an insurance company. We did mergers, acquisitions, elementary, pension, intergenerational transfer, call center, and in the end it was sold to an investment house. I gained crazy experience in all aspects of the industry and then I went independent.
"Every business owner, and it doesn't matter who, a dentist or an insurance agent, when he graduates he leaves with a certificate, but no one teaches him marketing, reading a financial statement, hiring and managing employees, efficiency. When I enter an insurance agency, I touch everything , financial reports, business development, marketing, differentiation, correct placement, work processes, work plans, planning and mentoring for owners. I write articles for a newspaper of insurance agents. Clients sent me other business owners, so I also advise attorneys, chefs, designers face. But the core is insurance."
"Only civil organizations helped us"
She belongs to a limited group of women who can be written about as being single, married plus one, divorced, married plus three and widowed. Now she is also a bereaved mother. Her second husband died 11 years ago of a heart attack at the age of 51 and left behind a debt of NIS 8 million that she did not know about, but she managed to get out of it within a year by paying only NIS 600,000, after negotiating with the creditors through a friend of her father's. She realized that if she Manage him, the strength she radiates will work against her, so she took a step back, and held the reins from afar.
Disaster struck her when the business she started started to gain momentum. It was impossible to manage it with four children at home, when the youngest is five and most of the work in Tel Aviv, when she is alone. At that time, she preferred to create stability and quiet in the house, and decided to close it and become a tenant, and only after six years did she open it again. Over the years, she gained clients and prestige, and became a household name in the field.
The disconnection, the failed conduct and the collapse of the state's systems added more difficulty to the heavy mourning. "None of the bodies helped us, only civil organizations. I saw a phone number of a government hotline that was supposed to help us, I picked up the phone and waited an hour on the line, as the record repeats over and over the phrase, 'Your time is important to us as a customer'. Do you understand? We are a customer How far the insensitivity has gone. They took a client-centered recording for the treatment of bereaved families.
"On one of the days of uncertainty, I receive a phone call. 'Eran is speaking. I'm from the victim center.' I thought he would give information or something. 'I wanted to know if I could help you with something. I realized that Michal is missing.' Able to be. They don't understand the situation? The authorities didn't understand how to approach us."
Do you have any idea what happened to her, what happened to her in the last moments?
"Everything we came to was through information that we were able to get. Three weeks ago, they picked up the phone from Lahab 433 and sent the location where they found her body on WhatsApp. Next to her, they found the body of one of the friends. I happened to be with clients in Ruhama at the time, so I drove to see the place, So close to the site of the party. They didn't do any pathological tests, they just did identification, because of the huge amounts of bodies, containers upon containers of bodies.
"Let's go back to my professional worlds for a moment. If a CEO of a business company failed, they would fire him to fix the situation. This is what I will tell any company in crisis that I reach out to. Look what they did in nature. Bring in a new CEO to fix the situation. It's not something that can be changed in nuances, change a team leader, go for effective work processes.
"There was a colossal failure here. It's not a few million shekels, but 1,500 dead, 4,000 wounded, 240 kidnapped. If it was only money – atonements – and we let the person who created the failure produce the solution as well. You have to kick the entire leadership chain. And you know what It worries me that I don't see how this happens. I want my youngest son, who is studying in high school, to join the army, because I think it can contribute to his development."
After the authorities started zeroing in on themselves, the family was recognized as a victim of hostilities, and received the thick mantle. "I would give up all this money for my daughter to live. No money is worth it. The feeling is that they are pouring money on us to keep our mouths shut. Someone will have to pay for it."
Michal loved dogs, she wanted to serve in the sting, before they pulled her to Israel. "When she was in South America, she sent a message to a friend who asked her why she was returning to Israel and not staying there. She said if mother had come here with the dogs she would have stayed. I am on the same page as the dogs and my honor."
When the Nesher municipality asked her to give a lecture on "mental resilience" to the residents, she asked that all proceeds, including hers, be donated to the "Oktz" unit, named after Michal. "A friend suggested establishing a foundation in her name. Michal loved to travel and the little prince. We thought that in all kinds of places where people sit for coffee in the field, we would put a bench of Michal, with an engraving of the little prince. We started collecting spots.
"Michal's funeral was crazy. Close to 3,000 people, around 700 people every day at Shiva. We were all mourning. We knew we had to get back on our feet. I'm self-employed, so I couldn't feel sorry for myself and went back to work. There is an intention to commemorate her, but I Not there yet. I now invest my time at work, at home and in my healing, which is to travel. Once every two weeks I go down to the desert or fly abroad. That's what strengthens me, nature and trips."
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