From the Liveblog of
Wednesday, May 22, 2024
WATCH: Hostage Families Forum releases harrowing footage of five female soldiers being abducted on Oct. 7
The Hostages Families Forum releases harrowing footage showing the abduction of five female soldiers from the Nahal Oz base by Hamas-led terrorists on October 7.
The video was taken by body cameras worn by Hamas terrorists that day as they attacked the base near the Gaza border.
It shows Liri Albag, Karina Ariev, Agam Berger, Daniella Gilboa and Naama Levy.
“The disturbing video has been the reality of Agam, Daniella, Liri, Naama, Karina, and 123 other hostages for 229 days,” the forum says in a statement.
“The video is a damning testament to the nation’s failure to bring home the hostages, who have been forsaken for 229 days.”
“The Israeli government must not waste even one more moment – it must return to the negotiating table today!”
Warning: Graphic footage
Relatives of the five say that the three minutes of broadcast footage has been heavily censored, with their oversight, for publication.
Eli Albag, Liri’s father, tells Channel 12 that the original footage is 13 minutes long.
“This is the most sensitive version… and still terribly harsh. We are exposing ourselves and our daughters. We went back and forth over and over about whether to release it. Three of the mothers have not seen the footage, are not prepared to see the footage, cannot bear to see the girls [in the footage].”
“It’s been 229 days since then,” he says, “and we are living it minute by minute… I have no words to describe the horrors: At that base, 54 male and female soldiers were murdered. Those girls sat for two hours with 11 bodies of female soldiers and one male soldier in their line of sight.”
He asks: “What else can we say? Where else can we shout? What else can we do to wake the nation up?”
Asked why the decision was made to have the footage broadcast, and told that the war cabinet is meeting tonight to discuss the hostages, Albag says: “If this film doesn’t change the thinking, this is the last bullet we have, to tell them. What else do you want? What else can we do? If that doesn’t influence them…”
It took five years to reach a deal for the release of kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit in 2011, he notes, “and they paid so much more” to get him out of Hamas captivity. “Wake up! There are 128 hostages. One hundred and twenty-eight. The number is beyond comprehension. Somebody has to wake up. And if this doesn’t wake them up, I don’t know what else to say.”
Yoni Levy, father of Naama, says he can see that she is “scared to death,” but also that “her survival instinct” is working, when she tells one of the terrorists that “she has friends in Palestine.”
“I have watched the footage several times and it doesn’t get any easier,” he tells Channel 12. “But for them, this film continues… For them, now, 229 days, 330,000 minutes, they’ve been living this. That’s why we’re screaming out.”
He says: “The hostages have become just one more in the chain of unsolved problems that the State of Israel is facing. Our goal is to say, people, this cannot be. Look what they go through in three minutes. Everything can wait. There is nothing more urgent than to return them. To return all 128.
“The State of Israel is strong enough… It can settle accounts with all of those despicable people…. [For the hostages,] we cannot drag our feet any longer.”
The Times of Israel Community.