2023-11-05 12:41:45
In one month, he thinks he gave “nearly 300 interviews” to the press. However, “time stood still” on October 7 for Yoni Asher, whose wife and two daughters disappeared during the Hamas attack, which kidnapped more than 240 hostages that day according to Israel.
Black T-shirt and medallion around his neck, this 37-year-old man stares into space before speaking to the media gathered by the Forum of Families of Hostages and Missing, in Tel Aviv.
For the past month, this drawn-looking father has ceased his activity as a real estate entrepreneur and has devoted himself to the campaign to bring back the hostages.
On October 7, while he remained alone at his home, north of Tel Aviv, his wife Doron, 34, and his daughters Raz and Aviv, 4 and 2 years old, visited his mother-in-law in the kibbutz of Nir Oz, very close to the border with the Gaza Strip.
This small rural community was a major target of the Hamas attack: of around 400 residents, more than twenty were killed and at least 75 were taken hostage, according to a kibbutz spokesperson on Thursday.
Doron Asher, middle, with his two daughters and mother, captured by Hamas on October 7, 2023. (Channel 12)
In total, at least 1,400 people were killed in Israel, the majority civilians.
The Israeli army has since announced the death of Efrat’s grandmother, who appeared alive in a video showing residents being taken away in a pick-up truck.
Yoni Asher recognized his wife and daughters in this video. It is the last proof of life of the three members of his family, who are also of German nationality.
And for him, “today’s date is still October 7. Time has stopped. »
Hamas has kidnapped more than 240 people, Israelis, foreigners or dual nationals, according to the Israeli army.
A man looks at posters with photos of Israelis held in Gaza during a demonstration in solidarity with the families of the hostages, in Rehovot, October 29, 2023. (Credit: Meïr Conforti /Protest organizers)
As part of its retaliation for the October 7 attack, Israel says its offensive aims to destroy Hamas’ military and governance capabilities, and has pledged to eliminate the entire terrorist group that rules the Gaza Strip. .
According to Hamas, in power in the Palestinian territory, nearly 9,500 people were killed. These figures cannot be independently verified and include both civilians and Hamas members killed in Gaza, including as a result of failed rocket attacks by the terrorist group itself. Israel claims to have killed some 1,500 Hamas terrorists inside the country on and following October 7.
“As a parent, we are already afraid when a small child jumps on his bed, so imagine our fear now, with these bombings everywhere,” said Yoni Asher, who wants “peace” for “all populations”.
“Reality is catching up with us”
With a trembling voice, Adva Adar, 32, wonders “how long” her grandmother Yafa, 85, “can survive” without medical care when she is already suffering from “heart and kidney failure, high blood pressure and suffers a lot.
“Every minute for her is a nightmare,” she adds.
Also a resident of Nir Oz, the grandmother appeared alive in a video, unlike Tamir, Adva’s cousin, of whom there has been no proof of life since the Hamas attack.
Palestinian terrorists kidnap an Israeli civilian, center, later identified as Yaffa Adar, 85, from Kibbutz Nir Oz and take her to the Gaza Strip, October 7, 2023. (Hatem Ali/AP Photo)
Like the rest of her family, Adva Adar, who returned from a trip to Paris to discuss the fate of the hostages, tries to “remain positive”, “to believe that she survived”.
“But sometimes, reality catches up with us,” adds this social worker, aware “that a month without medication might mean that she (…) died there.”
At 23, Ella Ben Amin now takes “a lot of pills” to fall asleep, and receives psychological assistance “twice a week” since her parents were kidnapped from Kibbutz Beeri.
But, like the other relatives of hostages, the young woman remains “concentrated on bringing (them) back” and multiplies interviews to make her cause heard.
Evening despair
Her mother Raz, aged 57, “needs several treatments” due to brain and spinal tumors and “mobility problems”, she explains.
If she remains “strong during the day”, Ella Ben Amin sometimes, in the evening, lets herself go “to despair” when she thinks “regarding how (her parents) sleep, what they eat, what they drink.”
According to the management of the Beeri kibbutz, 85 people – whose bodies have been identified – were killed there on October 7, and 32 people are missing, including suspected hostages.
An Israeli wearing a prayer shawl prays next to homes destroyed by Hamas terrorists, in Kibbutz Beeri, October 22, 2023. (Ariel Schalit/AP)
The survivors of this agricultural village were relocated to a hotel on the shores of the Dead Sea, explains Ella Ben Amin.
Every day, families come together to “sing together”, but also to exchange information and express themselves.
It is on this occasion that they are told “who was found dead, because many bodies have still not been identified,” she explains.
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