2023-10-07 22:30:01
by Francesco Battistini
Never have so many civilians been taken. The militiamen’s claims on Telegram. The army attempts raids to free them before they end up in Gaza
They’ve entered the house!… They’re trying to enter!…. The voice is a whisper. She says: My name is Dorin…. Or something like that. A woman. She hid in what remains of Nir Oz, her kibbutz under attack, a few kilometers from Gaza. Invisible, in the only safe corner she has left. Barricaded, in a terror that woke her up at dawn.
Dorin heard the shots, he says slowly, almost inhaling to the TV interviewer, he opened his eyes and the nightmare was already there, wandering around the rooms. The land of the flowerbeds, which flourished in the Negev, had suddenly become the land of the jackal. Strawberries and blood. Dorin on the phone with Israel-N12, they’re sending it live. A whisper, no more, because the beasts can hear it: They just came in, again!…. Try to give some useful information about those heavily armed Palestinians: They fire special projectiles, I saw that there are many houses destroyed…. More bangs are heard. Silence. In the studio, the cold: Dorin, are you still online? S…. Everything OK? Please send help….
It doesn’t have much battery. And after a few minutes, Dorin also disappears on Israel’s Black Saturday. A Shabbat without shalom, another Kippur and perhaps even worse. No one knows if Dorin got away. We learned a few hours later that in Nir Oz they also beat, killed and dragged the women and children into a pick-up. Shouting, rejoicing, praying, shooting at the sky to thank for this miserable loot of hostages: Allah-u akhbar, and the terror is even greater.
Accounts on Telegram are the new places for claims, videos and photos. How many did they catch? Israel does not reveal it: Dozens, Daniel Hagarg, army spokesman, admitted in the mid-afternoon, but I cannot give other indications, there are still twenty-two places under attack.
Someone has sold their lives dearly, there are five Palestinians killed on the outskirts of Sderot. And in Be’eri and Ofakim, about twenty kilometers from the Strip, a blitz is being attempted to free the hostages before they end up in the catacombs of the Strip. There’s a number going around: at least fifty Israelis, soldiers and civilians, mothers and children, even some Asian laborers. A video shows three poor terrified faces, they are civilians and not soldiers, and two are women. We took them to safe places – says Abu Obeida -, they are safe in our tunnels in Gaza. Safe… Let’s bring the good news to our Palestinian prisoners – the al-Qassam Brigades exult – we have dozens of captured officers and soldiers in our hands. The Hamas agency, Shebab News, specifies that there are 35 detainees. Detained? Don’t call them hostages, sternly warns Khaled Qadouri, leader of the Islamic movement: They are prisoners of war. And Saleh al-Arouri, another boss: Yes, prisoners. We will use them to make an exchange. You put our people in Israeli prisons, we took yours.
They took them in a thousand ways. By their hair, beating them, tying them up, pushing them into columns like innocent lambs destined for the slaughter. They’re breaking into my anti-missile shelter!, Ella shouts into her cell phone, buried in the bunker of the Be’eri kibbutz, connected to a live web TV: I hear many gunshots. They told us that the terrorists are in the canteen. We hear lots of gunshots. I lost contact with my family. I know my father was kidnapped. I don’t know if my mom is alive. Nobody tells us where to go, what to do….
At the time of the attack, many children were sleeping in the huts of Sukkot, the biblical refuge in the desert. We do it for a week, at the end of September, and Friday was the last night of camping. When the shots were heard, the parents rushed them to the safe rooms, but sometimes it didn’t help. It’s no surprise: no one has believed in konzeptizia, the proud infallibility that deceived the Israelis at the time of the Six Day War, for some time now. Israel in these hours has seemed like a small, disarmed giant. Where was our safety? — asks the former Navy chief, Eli Maron, in dismay — Where were our police? This is the failure of intelligence.
Israeli Hostages. What a shock. No one will be left behind, the governments of Jerusalem have always said. But who is saving all these people now? There is a special protocol for those captured: until now, however, there had always been a few hostages. And Hamas had never managed to take so many civilians. The endless war in Gaza began with Gilad Shalit, in 2006, and it’s back. Tens of Gilad. The soldier was then kidnapped almost by accident and in the middle of the street. Hamas held it for more than five years. The Israelis invaded Gaza, tried to liberate it. The boy’s parents pitched a tent in front of Bibi Netanyahu’s office for months. And an entire country mobilized by collecting money, putting up stickers, launching appeals. All in vain: in the end, Israel got Shalit back, yes, but only in exchange for a thousand Palestinians released from prison. One count a thousand. This time all the prisons should be emptied. And maybe it wouldn’t be enough.
October 7, 2023 (modified October 7, 2023 | 10:29 pm)
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