"Outside, one recent afternoon, a father stood holding a megaphone. "Bibi and Sara," he called out to the prime minister, using his nickname, and his wife. "It's Rom's dad." Ofir Braslavsky's 21-year-old son Rom is still being held hostage in Gaza, two years after Hamas led an attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, sparking the devastating Gaza war."
""I lost my trust in the country, my trust in the army. Terrorists entered my house, tried to open the safe-room door, and when they didn't succeed, they set the house on fire. And nobody came," Goddard says. "I know what the feeling of abandonment is. Hours when nobody comes. Hours when I hear my friends and parents being murdered.""
Hostage families have camped outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Jerusalem residence demanding a negotiated deal with Hamas to return captives and bodies held in Gaza two years after the Oct. 7, 2023 attack. Families accuse the government and military of abandoning victims and failing to prevent atrocities during the initial assault. Survivors describe deep personal losses, trauma, and loss of trust in state institutions. Families warn that prolonged military escalation risks returning hostages only as casualties and intensifies national divisions. Demonstrations combine public pleas, moral outrage, and pressure on leadership to prioritize hostage recovery over further military action.
Read at www.npr.org
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]