‘I just hope that they are alive’: How Hamas abducted 150 Israelis
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The hostages were seized from homes as well as from military bases and an enormous outdoor dance party.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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JERUSALEM – Ms Gaya Kalderon last heard from half her family at 8.26am on Saturday.
“They are here,” her sister, Sahar, 16, wrote in a text message.
“Who is?” said Ms Gaya, 21.
“We’re hiding from them,” Sahar said. “We left the house.”
“Where are you?” Ms Gaya said. “Where are you going?”
There was no reply.
It was not until Sunday that a terrified Ms Kalderon saw any sign of her missing relatives. A video appeared on social media of an Israeli child being shoved down a path by Palestinian militants.
“I am looking on Instagram, and I see a video,” Ms Kalderon recalled. “And it’s my brother.”
Erez, 12, and four other members of the Kalderon family are feared to be among an estimated 150 Israelis, many of them civilians, taken hostage by Palestinian militants during the broadest invasion of Israeli territory in 50 years.
The hostages were seized from homes in towns along Israel’s border with Gaza an enormous outdoor dance party.
They include civilians, soldiers, people with disabilities, children, grandparents and even a 9-month-old baby. The hostages are also believed to include at least one Palestinian resident of Israel, a bus driver who spent the night near the outdoor party after driving Israelis there, his family said.
The capture of so many Israelis by Palestinian militants has taken the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
On Monday night, the Hamas military wing warned that it would execute a civilian hostage
Already, Israel has responded to the deadly assault by Hamas
Hamas may have hoped that taking dozens of captives would ease its chances of pursuing a broad prisoner exchange with Israel, said Mr Eyal Hulata, who served as Israel’s national security adviser until January.
But for Israel, in the throes of one of the worst disasters in its history, now is not the time to even consider such an exchange, Mr Hulata argued.
Mr Hulata allowed that some Israeli captives might be killed in an ongoing Israeli offensive. But that would probably be Hamas’ responsibility for “placing them as human shields”, he said.
“I want to bring everyone home. But we cannot do that as long as the other side thinks they can get away with this,” Mr Hulata said.
In the past, Egypt and Qatar played key roles as mediators between Israel and Hamas as the two foes negotiated over captives.
But for now, the sides were only “at the stage of passing messages along”, rather than direct talks to free prisoners, said Mr Yaron Blum, a veteran Israeli intelligence official who served for five years as the country’s point person for captured and missing Israelis.
“My assessment is that they are passing along this message: Hamas is responsible, and that if one hair on the heads of those elderly, women, babies, soldiers is touched – Israel will go ballistic,” Mr Blum said.
Mr Yoni Asher’s nightmare began early on Saturday during a phone call with his wife, Ms Doron Asher Katz.
Whispering, Ms Asher Katz said she, her mother and their two small daughters were trapped inside her mother’s safe room in a village near the Gaza border.
“She told me, ‘There are terrorists inside the house,’” Mr Asher recalled.
Then came worse news: Ms Asher Katz’s mother’s life partner, Mr Gadi Moses, had left the safe room to try to reason with the intruders.
“She said, ‘They left – and they took him with them,’” Mr Asher said.
Mr Asher, 37, hoped that at least his spouse and children would be safe. But then the phone lines went dead.
It was the last time Mr Asher heard from his wife.
Tracking her cellphone remotely, he saw that the device was taken Saturday to southern Gaza, suggesting that she, too, had been kidnapped.
Then, he said, a video circulated on social media of abducted Israelis being driven through Gaza, bundled into the back of a pickup truck by armed gunmen. In the video, he said, a gunman attempts to spread a kind of blindfold over a woman’s head.
Mr Asher said he recognised the woman. It was his wife.
His daughters – Raz, five, and Aviv, three – and his mother-in-law, Ms Efrat Katz, 67, were squashed alongside her, he said.
“I can’t sleep – I’m living outside my own body,” Mr Asher said.
“I have two little babies, two little girls,” he added. “These little babies should not kept held or kept by terrorists.”
A few streets away on the same kibbutz Saturday, Mr Yarden Bibas, 36, and his wife, Ms Shiri, 30, also fled to the safe room in their home. Mr Bibas was armed with a small pistol, he texted his family, while militants fired automatic weapons outside their windows.
“I love you all,” Mr Bibas wrote. And then, 30 minutes later: “They’re coming in.”
The messages stopped.
Later, their family members said they saw footage circulating on social media showing Ms Shiri and their two brightly red-haired children – one of them just nine months old – imprisoned by Palestinian militants.
There was no sign of Mr Bibas.
Ms Shiri’s parents – Mr Yossi Silberman, an artist who worked various jobs around the kibbutz, and his wife, Ms Margit, a kindergarten teacher who suffers from Parkinson’s disease – also remain missing and are feared to have been abducted.
“I just hope that they are alive and that they are together. And I want them home, with me, so I can hug them tightly again,” said Ms Yifat Zeiler, the couple’s niece, sobbing.
“We feel that those responsible don’t know what to do, because this is a situation we’ve never been in before. That’s the feeling in Israel,” she added. “It’s a catastrophe.” NYTIMES
