Can anything shock the world out of its gross neglect of the remaining 130 hostages?
Families of the female hostages Hamas kidnapped from the Nahal Oz base on October 7 authorized the release of a video depicting the moment their daughters, nieces, and granddaughters were stolen.
The girls are bloodied and in shock as Hamas terrorists force them against a wall. One terrorist tells his comrade to “take their pictures.” Another screams at the girls, “I want you quiet! Quiet! Sit down,” and yet another tells them, “Our brothers died because of you, we will kill you.” One says to a girl, “You are so beautiful,” as blood drips from her mouth. In one scene, multiple terrorists are shown kneeling in prayer as the battered girls sit handcuffed behind them. Hamas filmed the footage on body cams, and until Wednesday, the IDF had only released parts of the video.
The girls are Liri Albag, Karina Ariev, Agam Berger, Daniella Gilboa, and Naama Levy. Naama you’ve likely seen before — in a video of Hamas dragging a handcuffed girl with bloodied sweatpants into a Jeep truck. Her mother, Ayelet, published a haunting piece in the Free Press in December, begging the world to demand the release of hostages:
The longer Naama is held in captivity, the more violence she is subjected to, the more likely she will suffer the consequences of lifelong post-traumatic stress. When she is released, I pray that the image of her abduction, and the experience of what that image represents, isn’t how she comes to see the world.
Meanwhile, time is passing through an hourglass, and the sands are not infinite.
The seventeen female hostages are not bargaining chips to be debated by diplomats. They are daughters, and one of them is mine. My primal scream should be the scream of mothers everywhere. Bring her home now!
Hamas still has 19-year-old Naama.
It has been seven months since the girls were kidnapped. Speculation that Hamas raped or sexually assaulted Israelis during the October 7 attack has been proven, as has speculation that Hamas sexually assaults hostages. As time passes and the world forgets what happened in October, families of the hostages have to keep pleading with the world to remember and stand up for their loved ones.
“The world is starting to forget that there are young women there,” Ashley Waxman Bakshi, who is the cousin of a female hostage, said. “Right now it feels like everything is just stuck. The whole world is talking about The Hague but in the end, what’s most important is that the hostages return. I don’t know what to believe anymore, they say one thing but then something completely different happens. I believe and hope that the video will spur some action.”
Israel has hosted many screenings of Hamas’s atrocities here in America. Families of the hostages had to sign waivers to allow the photos of their fathers, their husbands, their wives, their sisters, and their babies to be broadcast to journalists and congressmen who didn’t bother to believe Israel in the first place. Families must still broadcast their daughters’ faces to an international community that refuses to help Israel end Hamas for good. Can anything shock the world out of its gross neglect of the remaining 130 hostages?