“We hope she is alive,” were the devastating words of Argentine journalist and reporter Hernán Feler, who revealed that his aunt, Ofelia Roitman, 77, was kidnapped by Hamas after the ground attack from the Gaza Strip.
Feler explained that his aunt along with her husband, who was not at the attack due to a health problem, live in Kibbutz Nir Oz which is close to the Gaza border, and although everything seemed calm that day, the situation turned into hell in a matter of minutes.
“I have my aunt and uncle, my cousins, my cousins' children in Israel (…) First, in 1985, my aunt and uncle and cousins left Buenos Aires in search of a new life and since then they have lived in Israel. As soon as they arrived years ago, they settled in the Nir Oz kibbutz, which is next to the Gaza Strip. They always lived there. Today everyone lives in Israel, but the only ones left living in that old kibbutz are my aunt and uncle,” Feler said in an interview with D-Sports (103.1 FM).
“My uncle was not there the day of the attack because he had a health episode, but my aunt was there. And it seemed like a normal morning, like almost always, until the bombings started and my older cousin, Pablo, wrote to my aunt Ofelia to take cover in the shelter of the house just in case (...) When the bombing started, my aunt went downstairs with her cell phone to protect herself. She was in constant contact with my cousins until she told one of my cousins: 'I hear strange movements outside.'"
After a while, nothing more was heard from Ofelia and her relatives now assume that she was taken hostage, like so many other foreigners whose whereabouts, until now, are unknown.
Until now, Israeli authorities estimate that 150 people were kidnapped and taken to the Gaza Strip by the terrorist group Hamas. They already threatened to execute one by one the hostages for each air attack launched by Israel in retaliation for the unprecedented aggression that began four days ago.
The testimonies of the hostages' relatives are raw and terrible, especially because they are in the dark. No one knows exactly what is happening to the kidnapped people, but they do know that they were kidnapped by a group of terrorists who left a river of their blood behind.
There was no answer
The New York Times interviewed several relatives who revealed how their loved ones were kidnapped.
There is the case of Gaya Kalderon, who last heard from half of her family at 8:26 on Saturday morning, in the middle of the terrorist attack.
Her sister Sahar, 16, told her in a text message “They are here.”
“Who is?” Gaya responded.
“We’re hiding from them (…) We left the house,” continued Sahar, who could not answer the last two questions from her sister Gaya, 21 years old: “Where are you? Where are you going?"
“Dying of fear, alone”
In the past, Israel had to pay a very high price for hostages captured by Hamas. An iconic case is that of soldier Gilad Shalit, captured by the terrorist group and released after five years as a prisoner in 2011 in exchange for a thousand Palestinian prisoners after his kidnapping shocked the Israeli country and much of the international community.
With dozens of people taken as prisoners, there is no certainty about when the eventual negotiations will occur in exchange for the hostages, especially given the escalation of the conflict, with Israel increasing its firepower against Gaza after the largest violation of its borders in decades.
A case that went viral on social media was that of the grandmother Yaffa Adar, an 85-year-old woman who was kidnapped by Hamas terrorists and was seen riding in a golf cart with the militants hours after the attack. Her granddaughter, Adva Adar, says she knows nothing about her grandmother's whereabouts and is worried about her health.
"This is my grandmother, she was captured and taken to Gaza. Her name is Yaffe Ader and she is 85 years old! My grandmother who founded the kibbutz with her own hands, who believed in Zionism, who loved this country that abandoned her, was kidnapped. Probably abandoned somewhere, suffering severe pain, without medicine, without food and without water, dying of fear, alone. Nobody talks to us, they don't know anything, we learned all the information we have from the videos that circulated," Yaffa's granddaughter wrote on Facebook.
The name of this old lady is Yaffa Adar. She is 85yrs old and the grandma of Adva who wrote the post below.
Yesterday the Hamas militia kidnapped her from her own house. pic.twitter.com/Ph29rplgyX
— Yaniv Erlich (@erlichya) October 8, 2023
“These two little babies should not be with terrorists”
Another devastating story collected by the NYT is that of Yoni Asher, whose ordeal began that same Saturday morning during a phone call with his wife, Doron Asher Katz.
Mrs. Asher Katz told her husband that all the women in the home, including her mother and her two daughters, ages 5 and 3, were locked in a safe room in a town near the Gaza border.
"She told me, 'There are terrorists inside the house,'" said Mr. Asher about the conversation he had with his wife.
In the house was Gadi Moses, companion of Asher Katz's mother, who tried to mediate with the intruders in vain. "She said, ‘they left — and they took him with them,’" said Yoni Asher, who hoped for signs that his family was safe, but soon the call was cut off and the phone lines went dead.
That time was the last direct news Asher had of his wife, mother-in-law and daughters.
However, the man, 37, was able to track his wife's phone, which was taken across the Gaza border that same Saturday.
As the hours passed, Asher spotted a video on social media of several Israelis taken hostage through Gaza. As he told the NYT, in that video he recognized his wife, Doron; his daughters, Raz and Aviv; and his mother-in-law, Efrat.
"I can’t sleep — I’m living outside my own body," Asher told the media outlet. "I have two little babies, two little girls. These little babies should not be held or kept by terrorists."
