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Last Updated: October 09, 2023, 17:30 IST
Yoni Asher, who saw videos of his wife, daughters, who are under five years old, and mother-in-law, surrounded by Hamas militants before his wife’s phone was traced to Gaza, looks at his phone from his home in Ganot Hadar, Israel, October 8, 2023. (Reuters)
Israeli family’s nightmare as hostages in Gaza after a border incident. Trapped by Palestinian militants, they face an uncertain fate in this terrifying ordeal
Unbeknownst to the horror awaiting him, Yoni Asher’s life took a tragic turn early on Saturday morning during a phone call with his wife, Doron Asher Katz. Yoni’s wife was visiting her mother in the community of Nir Oz near the Gaza Strip with their two young daughters when Hamas attacked.
34-year-old Asher whispered down the phone line to Yoni, telling the chilling news that she, her mother, and their two young daughters were trapped inside a secure room in a village near the Gaza border. “She told me the terrorists are in the house,” he said, according to Reuters. Then the call got cut off. Soon after, the nightmare intensified when Asher Katz informed Yoni that her mother’s life partner, Gadi Moses, had left the safety of the room to confront the intruders. She somberly added, “They left — and they took him with them.”
Desperately, Asher clung to hope that his wife and children remained safe. But their brief connection was cut abruptly as the phone lines went dead. It was the last time Asher would hear his wife’s voice.
He remotely tracked the location of his wife’s phone, discovering that it had been taken to Khan Younis, a city in southern Gaza. The ordeal took another turn when a video began spreading on the internet. The footage showed abducted Israelis being driven through the territory, crammed into the back of a pickup truck. In the video, a gunman was seen attempting to blindfold a woman.
To Asher’s anguish, he recognised the woman in the video—it was his wife, Doron. Alongside her were their young daughters, Raz and Aviv, aged 5 and 3, as well as his mother-in-law, Efrat Katz. “I surely identified my wife, my two daughters and my mother-in-law on some kind of a cart, and terrorists of Hamas all around them,” he said.
Now sleep eludes him as he grapples with the surreal nightmare. “I have two little babies, two little girls,” he said in an interview. “These little babies should not be held or kept by terrorists.” Yoni’s family is not the only one.
Israeli authorities estimate that around 150 hostages are now being held captive in Gaza, with the majority seized from small Israeli border towns. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Netanyahu has vowed “vengeance” in the wake of an unprecedented assault.
However, the fate of the Israeli citizens taken into Gaza complicates how Israel delivers on its promise while keeping up with the longstanding principle of leaving no one behind.
(With agency inputs)
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