By Janis Laizans
TEL AVIV (Reuters) – A 21-year-old Israeli woman said she was in despair and had “no tears left” after her parents, sister and older brother went missing on Saturday after Hamas militants attacked their kibbutz and video emerged showing her 12-year-old brother being taken by gunmen.
Gaya Calderon, speaking from Tel Aviv, begged for the safe return of her family, taken from houses in Nir Oz kibbutz.
“We just need them back. It doesn’t matter that we don’t have a home anymore, it is all burned, I just need them back,” she said.
Calderon said she was woken in Tel Aviv by sirens on Saturday morning, as Islamist Hamas gunmen crossed from Gaza and began their rampage through towns in the deadliest attack in Israel’s history. A friend then told her that Hamas had entered the kibbutz.
She called her family to ask if they were ok. They told her they were not and that they did not know what was happening.
“I’m freaking out and just thinking about my family, my whole family. I’m the only one that is safe,” said Calderon.
In a messaging app group for her family she said her younger sister had written “Mom I love you.”
“I knew it is probably because she knows it is the end or something. It is my 16-year-old sister. I used to protect her my whole life.”
Video has emerged on social media in which Calderon said she can see her younger brother Erez being taken away by gunmen. She sees them pinching him and he flinches.
“It was so hard to watch. I don’t even… I never felt like this, I don’t even have tears any more in my eyes, I can’t cry because I cried so much,” she said.
“He had his pyjamas on, he just woke up in the middle of the night and someone came and took him.”
Calderon added that her brother did not appear to have blood on him, which gave her hope that he was alive and they were all together.
On the video a voice says in Arabic, “Those are young settlers, keep them here. Don’t hurt them, 100%, be wise with people like these, this is a child.”
Israeli authorities have said the death toll from the weekend Hamas attacks has surpassed 1,000.
Gaza’s health ministry said Israel’s retaliatory air strikes had killed at least 830 people and wounded 4,250.
Calderon pleaded that her family not be forgotten.
“Think about my little brother, little sister, my father who raised me, my sister and brother that I tried to protect them my whole life and now I can’t do it. I don’t want to say it but it reminds me of the Holocaust.”
(Reporting by Lianne Beck; Writing by Alexandra Hudson; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)
