Families agonize over hostages’ safety as Gaza pounded and Hamas threatens executions

In the hours after Hamas terrorists blew through Israel’s heavily fortified border fence and crossed into the country from Gaza, Ahal Besorai tried desperately to reach his sister. There was no answer.

Soon after, he learned from witnesses that gunmen had seized her, her husband and their teenage son and daughter, along with dozens of others amid a massacre that killed hundreds.

Now, aching uncertainty over their fate has left Besorai and scores of other Israelis in limbo.

“Should I cry because they are dead already? Should I be happy because maybe they are captured but still alive?” said Besorai, a life coach and resort owner who lives in the Philippines and grew up on Kibbutz Be’eri. “I pray to God every day that she will be found alive with her family and we can all be reunited.”

As Israel strikes back with missile attacks on targets in Gaza, the families of those dragged brutally into the Strip grapple with the knowledge that it could come at the cost of their loved ones’ lives. Hamas has warned it will kill one of the 130 hostages every time Israel’s military bombs civilian targets in Gaza without warning.

Eli Elbag said he woke Saturday to text messages from his daughter, Liri, 18, who’d just begun her military training as an army lookout at the Gaza border. She was being shot at, she wrote. Minutes later, the messages stopped. By nightfall, a video circulated by Hamas showed her crowded into an Israeli military truck overtaken by terrorists. The face of a hostage next to Liri was marred and bloodied.

“We are watching television constantly looking for a sign of her,” Elbag said. “We think about her all the time. All the time wondering if they’re taking care of her, if they’re feeding her, how she’s feeling and what she’s feeling.”

For Israel, locating hostages in Gaza may prove difficult. Although the Strip is tiny, subject to constant aerial surveillance and surrounded by Israeli ground and naval forces, the territory, just over an hour from Tel Aviv, remains somewhat opaque to Israeli intelligence agencies.

Many found out their loved ones had been taken hostage after seeing videos posted mockingly by their Hamas captors, but have no further information.

Yosi Shnaider has wrestled with worry since his family members were kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz, just over a mile from the Gaza border. He saw video of his cousin and her two young boys, held hostage.

“It’s like an unbelievable bad movie, like a nightmare,” Shnaider said Monday. “I just need information on if they are alive,” he added.

Also missing is his aunt who requires medicine to treat her diabetes and Parkinson’s disease. Since finding out, the woman’s sister has been “like a zombie, alive and dead at the same time” said Shnaider, a real estate agent in Holon.

Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said the country is committed to bringing the hostages home and issued a warning to Hamas, the Islamist terror group that controls Gaza.

“We demand that Hamas not harm any of the hostages,” he said. “This war crime will not be forgiven.”

Hamas has said it seeks the release of all Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, largely held for terror offenses — some 4,500 detainees, according to Israeli human rights group B’Tselem — in exchange for the Israeli captives.

Compilation of harrowing footage from the perspective of a girl who was in attendance at the NOVA festival yesterday in Israel.

240 attendees were murdered by Hamas terrorists.

The footage shows before, during, and after the attack.#Israel #Hamas pic.twitter.com/HzBtpLNak5

— Atlas and Intel (@AtlasandIntel) October 9, 2023

Uncertainty also weighs heavily on families who still do not know whether their relatives have been killed, taken into Hamas captivity, or have escaped and are on the run. Tomer Neumann, whose cousin was attending a music festival near the Gaza border and has since vanished, hopes it’s the last of the three options.

The cousin, Rotem Neumann, who is 25 and a Portuguese citizen, called her parents from the festival when she heard rocket fire, he said. She piled into a car with friends, witnesses said, but fled when they encountered trucks filled with terrorists. Later, her phone was found near a concrete shelter.

“All we have is bits and pieces of information,” said Neumann, who lives in Bat Yam, a city just south of Tel Aviv.

“What now is on my mind is not war and is not bombing,” he said. “All we want is to know where Rotem is and to know what happened to her and we want peace.”