Mother of hostage Elkana Bohbot fumes over mixed signals on how many captives dead
Ruhama Bohbot says ‘impossible’ to know if her son is still alive, ‘amidst all of the things that are not OK’ about his still being held hostage in Gaza
Melanie Lidman is an AP reporter and former Times of Israel reporter
Ruhama Bohbot was at home watching the news when she heard US President Donald Trump say something new: Three of the 24 hostages Israel considered to be alive in Gaza had probably died.
“As of today, it’s 21, three have died,” Trump said during a swearing-in ceremony for his special envoy to the Middle East.
Bohbot, who lives outside of Jerusalem, froze in terror — and then fury. Her 36-year-old son, Elkana, has been captive in Gaza since being abducted by Hamas-led terrorists on October 7, 2023.
No Israeli officials have reached out to the Bohbot family to say the number of hostages believed to be alive had changed. Yet Bohbot thought back to a public event last week, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said 24 of the hostages still in Gaza were alive. A mic picked up his wife, Sara, as she quietly said, “fewer.”
Later, Netanyahu’s office dismissed the moment as a slip of the tongue.
“So we’re just continuing to live in hope that everything will be OK… even amidst all of the things that are not OK. Because it’s impossible to know,” Bohbot said.
Other parents of hostages also expressed their frustration at the situation and demanded clarification from the authorities.
Netanyahu said late Wednesday Israel was confident that 21 of the 59 remaining hostages are still alive but that there was “doubt” about three others. An Israeli official said the three, whom he did not identify, are considered alive until there is evidence proving otherwise. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details.
If there is “new information being kept from us, give it to us immediately,” the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, an advocacy group, said Wednesday.
Some 5,600 Hamas-led terrorists killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped 251 during their invasion of southern Israel on October 7, 2023. Elkana Bohbot and dozens of others were grabbed from a music festival, where more than 300 people were slaughtered.
Israel responded with a military offensive to destroy Hamas, topple its regime, and free the hostages.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 50,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters.
Israel says it has killed some 20,000 combatants in battle as of January and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel on October 7. Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.
Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stands at 416.
Hamas has published three videos of Elkana Bohbot in the past months which were filmed under duress. In the most recent video, from mid-April, Elkana holds a fake telephone conversation with his wife, Rivka; their son, Re’em; his mother; and his brother — pleading with them to help him get out of Gaza.
While the videos were a sign of life, Bohbot knows that they don’t guarantee that her son is still alive. Hearing the government’s approval this week to expand operations in Gaza deepened her concern about the fate of her son and the other hostages. Israel is “failing so utterly” to rescue the hostages, she said.
Israel’s decision to freeze all humanitarian aid likely meant her son also wasn’t getting food, she said. Humanitarian aid is the primary food source for 80 percent of Palestinians in Gaza, the World Food Program said in its monthly report for April, though that figure has likely risen in the past month.
“I just want to imagine that he’s holding on and that he’s okay for now, that’s my hope and that’s my belief right now,” she said.
Israel stopped allowing aid into Gaza on March 2 after the first phase of a ceasefire and hostage release deal ended, leading many organizations to warn of severe malnutrition and hunger in Gaza. Jerusalem argued that Hamas diverted much of the aid that entered during the six-week truce, but said that the 650 trucks per day were enough to feed the population for an extended period. Israel says it won’t allow food, fuel, water, or medicine into the territory until it puts in place a system giving it control over the distribution.
The IDF reportedly plans to transition away from wholesale distribution and warehousing of aid and to instead have international organizations and private security contractors hand out boxes of food to individual Gazan families, according to Israeli and Arab officials familiar with the matter. The UN and aid groups have rejected the proposal.
Bohbot is desperately hoping that Trump’s visit to the region next week may bring a breakthrough in ceasefire negotiations. Her family is still paying rent on a stall at a market in Tel Aviv, where Elkana had been planning to open a gourmet ice cream shop.
The family will mark Re’em’s fifth birthday next month – his second during his father’s captivity. Re’em has started saying things like “if my daddy comes home,” to which the family gently corrects him – “your daddy is coming home, just wait a little bit longer,” Bohbot said.
“He has binoculars that he made in kindergarten, he goes out occasionally and takes a look in the binoculars to look for his father,” Bohbot said.
The Times of Israel Community.