RELEASED: Brodutch family: Mother Hagar, kids Ofri, 10, Yuval, 9 and Oriya, 4
Father Avihai Brodutch set off a protest movement as one of the first people to sit outside the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv, demanding safe return of all hostages.
Hagar, 40, Ofri, 10, Yuval, 9 and Oriya Brodutch, 4, were released on November 26 as part of a temporary ceasefire deal brokered by Qatar and the United States between Hamas and Israel. This is the story of their capture:
Hagar, 40, Ofri, 10, Yuval, 9 and Oriya Brodutch, 4, were abducted by Hamas terrorists from their Kfar Aza home when the kibbutz was attacked on October 7.
Avihai Brodutch, their husband and father, was defending the kibbutz while his family was hiding in their sealed room. When he returned wounded to find his family, they were gone and he thought they were dead.
Several days later, he heard from the kibbutz that all four were still alive, and were seen being abducted by the Hamas gunmen, along with Avigail Idan, the three-year-old daughter of slain neighbors Roee and Smadar Idan, who had fled to the Brodutch home.
“I felt like I won the lottery,” Brodutch told ABC News, upon hearing that his family wasn’t killed, but had been abducted to Gaza.
Ofri Brodutch marked her 10th birthday in Gaza, while her father, Avihai, was one of the first people to sit outside the Defense Ministry offices in Tel Aviv, demanding the safe return of all the hostages.
He sat with his dog and a sign that read, “My family was taken to Gaza.”
As the days went on, Brodutch became one of the more vocal family members in the fight to bring home the hostages.
“Do you know why my family was abducted to Gaza?” Brodutch yelled in a Channel 12 interview on November 11. “Because there wasn’t an army to defend us. Hamas is tiny next to Israel the giant,” he said. “The soldiers were in back of me, they weren’t in front of me, and Hamas raped our women and kidnapped our children. I stood at my house and saw Hamas coming with my eyes but I didn’t see tanks, helicopters, soldiers. You didn’t protect me.”
