Oren Rozen, Walls of Hope Mural Project, Tel Aviv
In early April, as we approached the six-month mark since October 7, 2023, I asked the question that seemed to be getting lost in the shuffle: Where are the remaining 100+ hostages? We are now approaching the eleven-month mark. There has been nothing but bad news in response to my earlier question. True, the hostages are now very prominently in the news–but the reasons for this are grim. Six were executed this past weekend, unleashing protests in Israel in response, as many blame Netanyahu for failing to secure a hostage release deal earlier. Reports of other hostages who have died in captivity abound. But one category of hostages continues to receive little attention–children.
Children were among the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas during the October 7, 2023, attacks. While some children were released from captivity during the ceasefire, more are still held hostage, including the two brothers Bibas. The younger one, Kfir, was just nine months old at the time of capture, the youngest of all the hostages. They were abducted with their parents, Shiri and Yarden. Hamas refused to release Shiri and the boys last November, claiming (falsely) that they had been killed in an Israeli airstrike. But other child hostages were released at that time. And this week, for the first time since October 7, the U.N. heard a report on the fate of child hostages.
Tol Staff reports for Times of Israel:
The United Nations Security Council on Wednesday heard of the chilling effects of captivity on Israeli child hostages held by the Hamas terror group in Gaza in a meeting requested by Israel and its allies.
The discussion was convened at the request of Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon along with ambassadors of the United States, United Kingdom, and France after the murder by Hamas of six Israeli hostages late last week. Their bodies were recovered on Saturday, and autopsies revealed they had been killed a day or two earlier.
At the meeting, Dr. Efrat Bron Harlev of Schneider Children’s Hospital in the central Israeli city of Petah Tikva testified to her experience treating Israeli children who spent more than a month in captivity in Gaza before their release as part of a weeklong truce agreement last November.
“When they arrived, they did not look like children. They looked like shadows of children. No impressions on their faces — they were not happy, they were not crying, they were mostly very silent. [They asked us] questions like, ‘Are we allowed to look out the window? May I step out of bed?’”
Danon accused the Security Council of apathy in the face of the hostages’ abuse, telling the body, “If you would truly care for the Palestinian people, and truly wanted to achieve an end to this war that Hamas started, you would officially draft and pass a resolution designating Hamas as a terrorist organization and condemning Hamas for their hostage taking.”
Read the full article here.