Ofir and Dikla wanted to go to the mall with their kids

Ofir and Dikla wanted to go to the mall with their children.

It’s such a simple sentence. A basic day in Ramle like any other: a family drives to the mall and parks in the parking lot and walks to the elevator and pushes a button and joins the murmur of hundreds of others just like them, buying the same jeans or dresses, maybe a book or a little piece of jewelry.

A stop at Aroma for a croissant and a cappuccino, chocolate milk for the kids.

Ofir and Dikla wanted to go to mall with their children.

The thing is, going out isn’t so simple for Ofir and Dikla and their children.

Dikla has muscular dystrophy. So does one of her 9-year-old twin girls. The youngest, a little baby girl, has cerebral palsy. Walking is difficult at best — some days, impossible.

Ofir and Dikla wanted to go to the mall to be like any other family.

There was a parking space marked for disabled people — a good spot near the entrance, a spot where Dikla and the girls could be like any other family going to the mall.

But another car parked next to that spot was taking up part of the space — you know what I’m talking about, that one asshole driver who feels entitled to park like king of the world, we’ve all seen it — and sometimes, maybe we’ve even been that driver.

Ofir got out of the car and asked the elderly driver to please move.

According to Dikla, the driver and his wife refused, and she began hitting Ofir with her bag. Ofir pushed her away and she fell to the floor, at which point, the man shot him in the leg.

“He [Ofir] said, ‘Why did you shoot me? What’s wrong with you?’” Dikla recalled, saying the gunman then continued firing, hitting her husband in the chest.

“My daughter saw everything,” Dikla said. “She asked me why her father was lying on the ground.”

Ofir and Dikla wanted to go to the mall with their children. Maybe they needed new sheets or pillowcases. Or a pair of shoes for aching legs. A cup of coffee and a croissant.

Ofir did everything for Dikla and their girls that she couldn’t do herself — basic things we take for granted when our muscles work normally, when we don’t need wheelchairs. Theirs was a family with a lot of suffering — muscular dystrophy and cerebral palsy are life-changing, world-altering conditions.

Ofir and Dikla wanted to go the mall with their kids just like any other family, and now Ofir is dead, having bled out in front of his wife and little girls, who watched it happen and will never forget.

When did we as people stop being kind to one another? When did we become so angry? So cruel as to shoot a man down like this in cold blood over a simple request to move the car just a little, so a woman and children with special needs could go to the mall like everyone else?

We cannot fix this and take away the pain… but we can help show Dikla and her beautiful family that they are not all alone, and that the world can be kind.

Click HERE to help.