Can Israel’s hostages be saved?

The last message that Shaked Haran saw from her father was just after 7.30 a.m. on the Saturday of the Hamas attacks in Israel. Her parents were in the safe room of their house in Kibbutz Be’eri, just outside the Gaza Strip. The message said that ‘masked terrorists’ were ‘swarming’ everywhere. ‘We don’t think we’ll make it out alive.’ Then nothing. When Israeli soldiers finally arrived, the house was a smoking ruin. But there was no sign of her parents, nor of her sister, her sister’s husband, their daughter aged three and son aged eight, nor of an aunt and her 12-year-old daughter, nor of another aunt and an uncle. Ten members of the family were gone. Hours later, one of her father’s friends got through to his mobile. It was answered by someone shouting in Arabic: ‘Hostage! Hostage! Gilad Shalit! Gaza!’

She believes this was a member of Hamas saying they had her family, just like Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier who was held in Gaza for five years. Haran is a lawyer in her thirties and is leading a campaign to somehow bring her relatives home. The campaign sent me a photo of the three-year-old, Yahel, who has a mop of blond ringlets. Haran says the worst thing is wondering if the two youngest children have been separated from their parents. We speak on Zoom and she’s washed out from lack of sleep. They have heard nothing from Hamas about the family. ‘Where are they? Are they safe? We don’t know what their situation is. We have no idea. [That] is kind of an ongoing terror attack.’

Haran is pinning her hopes on the fact that Yahel, Naveh, the eight-year-old, and several others among the captive family have German citizenship as well as Israeli.