Families in Israel and other countries agonize await news of their loved ones being held hostage by terrorists.
A grandma who learned Arabic in the goal of forging ties with her neighbors is among those held prisoner. 11 members of an extended family are among the others, as is an old guy who is wheelchair-bound and needs medical attention. Another is a nurse who throughout the years delivered thousands of children to Israeli and Palestinian parents.
All are among the approximately 150 individuals who were taken hostage by Hamas terrorists early on Saturday after massive raids on Israeli towns and villages close to the heavily guarded border with the Gaza Strip. Along with numerous Israelis, they also include citizens of Brazil, Britain, Italy, the Philippines, and the United States. It has not been verified independently how many hostages were taken, as reported by Hamas and Israeli authorities.
If Israel conducts airstrikes inside of Gaza that target civilians without giving them a notice that would allow them to evacuate, militants have threatened to begin killing captives. The relatives and friends of those who were seized are now in a dreadful and hopeless situation, with nothing left for them to do but wait.
Psychotherapist Noam Sagi thinks his mother Ada, who will turn 75 next week, is one of the hostages being held. Since she called him early on Saturday morning from a panic room at Kibbutz Nir Oz, a communal settlement close to the southeast border with Gaza, he hasn’t heard from her.
In 1948, Ada Sagi, a Polish Holocaust survivor’s daughter, was born in Israel. She learnt Arabic and taught the language to others in southern Israel as a member of a kibbutz founded on the principles of equality and humanism as a method to enhance communication and create better relationships with Palestinians living nearby, according to her son.
Sagi is hoping that his mother can talk with the hostage-takers with the aid of her linguistic skills. But she recently had a hip replaced and suffers from terrible allergies. He is quite concerned.
“The only hope I have right now is almost like for humanity to do something for me to see my mother again and for my son to see his grandmother again,” said Sagi to The Associated Press.
Sagui Dekel-Chen, a 35-year-old married father of two kids who is expecting the birth of his third child, also resides in Nir Oz. His father, Jonathan, claims that although neighbors said that he assisted in repelling the militants who assaulted the kibbutz, he hasn’t been seen or heard from since.
At a news conference held in Tel Aviv to urge the U.S. authorities to free the captives, Jonathan Dekel-Chen stated that over 240 of the community’s 400 people were either deceased or missing.
In her speech, Rachel Goldberg described her 23-year-old son Hersh Goldberg-Polin, a Berkeley, California native who was saving money to see the world.
Hersh was present at a concert where at least 260 young people lost their lives. According to witnesses, Hersh and a companion picked up and threw the grenades that militants had thrown into the shelter where a group of festival goers had sought cover, but Hersh lost an arm when one of them exploded.
Since the extremists put him in the back of a pickup truck and fled, he hasn’t been seen. At the Gaza border, his cell phone signal was cut off.
Adrienne Neta, a California native, has been a resident in Israel since 1981. Her family claimed that during her lengthy career as a nurse and midwife, her patients’ ethnicity and religion were unimportant.
At least 100 people were eventually discovered dead in Adrienne Neta’s home in Kibbitz Be’eri, where she was calling her relatives as the militants broke in. Then the line stopped working.
The best-case scenario, according to her son Nahar Neta, is that she is being held captive and is not already dead.
A family with dual citizenship from the United States and Italy that was residing in the same southern Israeli village of Be’eri is among those who are rumored to have been taken prisoner.
Eviatar Moshe Kipnis, 65, Lilach Lea Havron, 60, and their health care assistant are among those who were last seen Saturday morning hiding out in their safe room as militants swept through the village.
Eight members of Havron’s family, including three children, are also missing, according to their son Nadav Kipnis, who told The Associated Press that they are in addition to the aide and his parents.
Because no remains were found and some of their mobile phones were found in Gaza, the family believes that all 11 were taken prisoner. The father, who requires regular medical treatment for a serious autoimmune ailment and uses a wheelchair and various drugs, is the target of the family’s anxieties.
The foreign minister of Italy visited Egypt on Wednesday in an effort to secure support from local Arab nations for the release of hostages, including Kipnis’ parents and family.
The family’s only source of information at the moment is the texts and videos from a “nightmarish” group chat of Be’eri neighbors who detailed in real time as the militants went door to door, forcing individuals from their safe places, sometimes by lighting their homes on fire, according to Kipnis.
The discussion recounted “people being dragged out of their homes by terrorists,” “people jumping off windows because their safe rooms are starting to fill with smoke, and they were choking and they broke their legs trying to run to different houses.” The conversation was summarized by Kipnis.