By Joseph Campbell
KRAMIM, Israel (Reuters) – Lishay Lavi had only seconds to give her husband Omri a last message before he was taken into captivity by Hamas gunmen who stormed their kibbutz during the deadly attack on Israel on Oct. 7.
Now staying with family in another kibbutz in southern Israel, she said she knew what was happening when the gunmen broke in, forced the family out in their pyjamas at gunpoint to a neighbouring home, and took away her 46-year-old husband.
“I told him four sentences,” she said. “I told him that I love him, I told him that I (will) guard our daughter, that I’m waiting for him, and I told him also, ‘Don’t be a hero, because I want you back here’.”
On one of the most traumatic days of Israel’s 75-year history, the Israeli government says more than 1,200 people were killed and over 240 Israelis and foreigners were seized and taken as hostages to the Gaza Strip.
Israel responded by launching a military offensive in the Gaza Strip which Palestinians authorities say has killed more than 13,000 people, and the fate of the hostages has become a central issue in the war.
Israel’s military leaders have vowed to liberate as many hostages as possible, and talks aimed at securing the release of at least some of them appear to be close to bearing fruit, but the bodies of at least two hostages have been found.
For the hostages’ families, the days of waiting weigh heavily. Lavi has to answer her two year-old daughter Roni’s increasingly insistent questions about what has happened to her father.
“She asks, ‘Where is daddy?'” Lavi said. “At first she thought that ‘Daddy went to a treatment,’ because Omri is a shiatsu healer. And after two days it was, ‘Daddy went to (on) a trip.’ And after today, she said, and this is what we told her until now, ‘Daddy got lost.'”
Much of the world’s attention has been focused on child and elderly hostages, but Lavi said the husbands and sons taken by the gunmen should not be forgotten either.
“I need my Omri back, I need my man back. I need all the world to understand that Omri, (was) taken from our home, in his boxers, without shoes even, and we need him back.”
(Writing by James Mackenzie, Editing by Timothy Heritage)
