Nearly a dozen members of the same family — including three young girls — are still missing more than three days after Hamas terrorists stormed their Israeli kibbutz, a close friend told The Post on Tuesday.
The parents, sister, brother-in-law, nieces, uncles and aunts of Israeli lawyer Shaked Haran have not been heard from since the sneak attack early Saturday, the family friend said.
The friend, Haran’s boss Rachel Gur of Manhattan, said the distressing call — possibly from one of their captors — came Sunday when family members were frantically calling missing relatives.
“Someone picked up one of the phones in Arabic-accented Hebrew and said something along the lines of ‘Kidnapped’ and “Gaza’ and hung up,” Gur said. “That was the last sign of life we saw.
“Since then we have had no sign of life.”
Gur, a lawyer and ministerial assistant in Israel who studied law at New York University, said Haran has been part of his staff since graduating from law school — and like family.
The Haran family lives in Kibbutz Be’eri near the Gaza Strip, one of the first sites overrun by Hamas terrorists during Saturday’s dawn attack — and where at least 100 bodies were found this week.
Nearly a dozen members of the same family, including three girls aged between 3 and 12, are still missing from their kibbutz after a sneak attack on Israel by radical Islamist militants. The Haran Family Radical Hamas terrorists attacked this kibbutz near the border with the Gaza Strip, burning houses to force residents out of their shelters. Nearly a dozen family members of lawyer Shaked Haran, including his nephew, are still missing. Getty Images
Gur said Haran, who is pregnant and has two young children, is safe with her husband – but is distraught over the loss of her relatives. The last communication from his father came after the attack when Haran’s brother received a text from their parents.
“His parents sent him a WhatsApp saying that we are in a safe room,” Gur said. “‘There are armed terrorists, masked terrorists, just crowding. We didn’t think we’d make it out alive.’And that was it. He just lost communication. It was Saturday around 7:30am”
Among the missing are Haran’s niece — Yahel Neri Shoham, 3; Haveh Shoham, 8; and Noam Avigdori, 12 — who are German nationals, while other relatives are Italian, Gur said.
The horror of the sneak attack, which has left more than 1,100 Israelis dead, also resonated with Gur.
Shaked Haran’s burning family home, which is all gone. The Haran family
“I grew up with the story – my husband’s father fought in the Yom Kippur War,” she said. “And we grew up on stories about people coming to synagogue and telling everyone, ‘You have to go home, or you have to go into the army.’ I never thought it would happen to our generation.”
Now, Gur says Hamas’ attacks have surpassed the destruction of the 1973 conflict.
“The Yom Kippur War, you have to remember, about 2,900 people died altogether in their weeks of fighting,” he said. “The majority of them are soldiers. It was a fierce battle, but the majority of them were soldiers. There was no massacre of civilians.
“This is the day when more Jews have been killed since the Holocaust,” he added on Saturday. “We haven’t seen a day like this since the Holocaust.”
Israeli soldiers patrol an Israeli kibbutz near the border with the Gaza Strip that was overrun by radical Islamic militants Saturday. Getty Images
Gur said he and Haran’s friends and relatives tried to shoulder the burden of her worries, worried about her health as she was eight months pregnant. But the grief goes beyond just one family.
“There was a huge amount of anger,” he said. “We just need to focus.
“There is anger at Hamas, anger at the Israeli government. People are feeling it,” Gur added. “But we have to focus on who we can save. We can be angry after that.”
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
