Families of Hamas Hostages Share Their Anguish
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2023-10-17
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News Article :-
Yakov Argamani has the pale face and broken soul of a man whose child is in extreme danger. He shuffles around his immaculate house in southern Israel, a book of psalms in his right hand, the front door constantly banging open and shut with visitors, plates of freshly made food, more than he could ever possibly eat, piling up on the countertops.
“Noa was here, there, everywhere,” he said of his daughter, Noa, who was kidnapped. “Her smell is missing, her voice. All of a sudden it’s gone.”
“And I’m lost,” he said.
Hen Avigdori, a screenwriter, is missing his wife and daughter. He sits in a quiet apartment near Tel Aviv with his teenage son. They have a deal: Mr. Avigdori shares all the information he has — which isn’t much — and his son shares how he is feeling.
But Mr. Avigdori is struggling himself.
“I’m in this endless loop of hope and despair, hope and despair,” he said. “I need some proof of life. I need to know where my wife and daughter are. It’s driving me crazy.”
Ilan Regev Gerby, a door salesman with a stubbly salt-and-pepper beard, is haunted by the last conversation he had with his daughter, Maya, which he recorded on his phone. She was at the rave party on Oct. 7 where gunmen from the Hamas militant group massacred hundreds of young people and kidnapped many others. She called as the gunmen closed in.
“Dad, they saw me, dad, they saw me, dad, they saw meeeee.”
Then the line cuts.
These are the families experiencing the unbearable anguish of being in the middle of the world’s most complicated hostage crisis in recent memory. Babies, grandmothers and wounded Israeli soldiers. Americans, Filipinos, French and Mexicans. Scores of people have been abducted from that rave party and from a ring of small towns and kibbutzim that heavily armed Hamas members besieged for hours before Israel’s security forces could respond.
On Monday, the number of publicly known hostages increased to almost 200, up from the 150 that had been spoken of since the beginning of the conflict. An Israeli military spokesman said that the military had “updated” the families of 199 hostages, but he did not say what they discussed.
Experts say that Hamas has most likely locked them up in a warren of underground tunnels in the Gaza Strip, as the Israeli Air Force bombards the territory and the army prepares to invade. It’s not clear to anyone how Israel is going to launch a full-scale invasion of Gaza without putting the hostages at greater risk.
What terrifies family members even more is that the men who decide whether their loved ones live or die are the same ones who demonstrated a level of brutality that shocked the world. They slaughtered more than a thousand unarmed civilians, they hunted down children, they butchered people with axes and knives. But the hostages are also perhaps the last leverage these men hold.
Hamas could use them as human shields. Or trade
News Article :-
Yakov Argamani has the pale face and broken soul of a man whose child is in extreme danger. He shuffles around his immaculate house in southern Israel, a book of psalms in his right hand, the front door constantly banging open and shut with visitors, plates of freshly made food, more than he could ever possibly eat, piling up on the countertops.
“Noa was here, there, everywhere,” he said of his daughter, Noa, who was kidnapped. “Her smell is missing, her voice. All of a sudden it’s gone.”
“And I’m lost,” he said.
Hen Avigdori, a screenwriter, is missing his wife and daughter. He sits in a quiet apartment near Tel Aviv with his teenage son. They have a deal: Mr. Avigdori shares all the information he has — which isn’t much — and his son shares how he is feeling.
But Mr. Avigdori is struggling himself.
“I’m in this endless loop of hope and despair, hope and despair,” he said. “I need some proof of life. I need to know where my wife and daughter are. It’s driving me crazy.”
Ilan Regev Gerby, a door salesman with a stubbly salt-and-pepper beard, is haunted by the last conversation he had with his daughter, Maya, which he recorded on his phone. She was at the rave party on Oct. 7 where gunmen from the Hamas militant group massacred hundreds of young people and kidnapped many others. She called as the gunmen closed in.
“Dad, they saw me, dad, they saw me, dad, they saw meeeee.”
Then the line cuts.
These are the families experiencing the unbearable anguish of being in the middle of the world’s most complicated hostage crisis in recent memory. Babies, grandmothers and wounded Israeli soldiers. Americans, Filipinos, French and Mexicans. Scores of people have been abducted from that rave party and from a ring of small towns and kibbutzim that heavily armed Hamas members besieged for hours before Israel’s security forces could respond.
On Monday, the number of publicly known hostages increased to almost 200, up from the 150 that had been spoken of since the beginning of the conflict. An Israeli military spokesman said that the military had “updated” the families of 199 hostages, but he did not say what they discussed.
Experts say that Hamas has most likely locked them up in a warren of underground tunnels in the Gaza Strip, as the Israeli Air Force bombards the territory and the army prepares to invade. It’s not clear to anyone how Israel is going to launch a full-scale invasion of Gaza without putting the hostages at greater risk.
What terrifies family members even more is that the men who decide whether their loved ones live or die are the same ones who demonstrated a level of brutality that shocked the world. They slaughtered more than a thousand unarmed civilians, they hunted down children, they butchered people with axes and knives. But the hostages are also perhaps the last leverage these men hold.
Hamas could use them as human shields. Or trade
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