From the Liveblog of
Monday, October 28, 2024
Hostage’s sister warns lawmakers a captive could come home from Gaza with a baby
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
The Knesset Committee on the Status of Women and Gender Equality meets on the plight and sexual abuse of female hostages held in Gaza, with the sister of one warning that there’s a chance a captive will come home with a baby.
What the committee is doing is “simply not enough,” says Yarden Gonen, the sister of hostage Romi Gonen, adding that she feels “like I’m being laughed at.”
Giving a graphic description of the sexual torture suffered by women on October 7 and by hostages during their captivity, Gonen states that “if someone comes back with a baby, then I will come back here and run after each one of you here, because this could have been avoided.”
Simona Steinbrecher, mother of Doron Steinbrecher, 30, calls on lawmakers to “bring me back my Doron alive, and not in a body bag.”
A hostage deal is “complete victory,” she states, riffing on a phrase used often by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to refer to the attainment of military objectives.
Speaking in English, Mandy Damari, the mother of British-Israeli hostage Emily Damari, tells the committee that she cannot go to any more memorials and calls the struggle for the hostages a “fight for decency, morality and justice against a fight for control and money power and ego.”
However, “I just don’t know how we can fight against it much longer. My strength is waning very quickly, and it defies all belief that they’re still there,” she adds.
A number of women attended the panel dressed as hostage Naama Levy, whose abduction from Nahal Oz with bloodstained sweatpants was seen in a harrowing video on October 7.
Only opposition lawmakers are in attendance.
Emily Damari, the mother of Mandy Damari, tells lawmakers that she cannot go to any more memorials and calls the struggle for the hostages a “fight for decency, morality and justice against a fight for control and money power and ego. pic.twitter.com/xZkZbhfnVy
— Sam Sokol (@SamuelSokol) October 28, 2024
