Relatives of the six Israeli hostages executed by their terrorist captors on August 29 pen an article in Time magazine, revealing previously unaired details about the extent of starvation endured by their loved ones and about meetings with international officials who let them down during months of advocacy.
The piece is written by the father of Carmel Gat and the parents of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Ori Danino, Eden Yerushalmi, Almog Sarusi and Alexander Lobanov, plus the latter’s wife. The bodies of all six abductees were located by IDF troops and brought to Israel two days after their murders.
The families reveal that during his time in captivity, Lobanov’s weight dropped from 86 kilograms (190 pounds) to 60 (132 pounds).
They say that Goldberg-Polin, who was around 1.8 meters (6 feet) tall, had weighed just 52 kilograms when he was murdered.
And the body of Eden Yerushalmi, who was 1.65 meters (5 foot 5) tall, weighed just 36 kilos (79 pounds).
The families say Israeli leaders did not secure the release of their loved ones and and the other hostages “for calculations they deemed strategic.”
“But there are so many other people who could have done so much more to save them,” they add. “For 328 days, many of us traveled the world and met politicians, diplomats, business titans, celebrities—people with power. They made promises, nodded, held our hands, cried with us, hugged us tightly…and then failed to deliver results.
“Celebrities met us in secluded rooms but asked that we never acknowledge publicly that they did so; they feared losing followers. Leaders of humanitarian aid organizations, including the International Red Cross and the World Health Organization, claimed they would like to intervene but could not figure out how. Two Muslim clerics confidentially assured us, wrongly, that our loved ones would be okay because harming hostages violated Islam; but they and too many other religious leaders were publicly silent,” they continue.
“More than one of these many people with power assured us that the hostages would survive, that their return was only a matter of time. Some said our loved ones were suffering but surely not dying.”
They end their column with a plea to international actors: “Take action now to bring home their 101 brothers and sisters still in Gaza. As Rabbi Hillel famously asked in ancient Jewish law, ‘If not now, WHEN?'”
