How do you respond when someone you know has been declared missing?
Before June 22nd of 2024, I couldn’t tell you, and I never imagined a day in which I would. On a joyful Sabbath day, as family and friends gathered for my pregnant sister’s gender reveal party, we received an urgent message—our friend Yitshak Cohen (37), who does business in the Philippines, went missing with his fiancée, Geneva Lopez (26), after a meeting to claim land as collateral for an unpaid debt.
Yitshak – my brother’s best friend, is like another son in our house – he always walks in the house without knocking as he yells my parents’ name announcing his arrival, cracks us up every Sabbath dinner and holiday meal, and picks us up in his beat-up car to hike the cool streams in the desert near our house. He possesses an extraordinary zest for life and was always generous, hospitable, loud, and argumentative with a short temper, everything you’d expect a typical Moroccan to be.
The more disturbing details surfaced, the...
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So sad that those young and beautiful people died. They should not go to Philippines for business. I worked in China for 6 years and learnt first hand about that country. It is for enjoying nature, not business. I am sorry nobody prevented that young Israeli to try any kind of business there.