The families of the six hostages who Hamas terrorists murdered in a tunnel in Rafah published an open letter in Time magazine on Wednesday, pointing the finger not only at Hamas, who kidnapped their loved ones, but also at others who failed to rescue them.
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Ori Danino, Eden Yerushalmi, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Alexander Lobanov, Carmel Gat, and Almog Sarusi
(Photo: Courtesy/ AP)
"On the clear, blue-skied Saturday morning of Oct. 7, 2023, our loved ones and 245 others were brutally stolen from us by Hamas terrorists. Carmel was visiting her parents at Kibbutz Be'eri. Almog, Alexander, Eden, Hersh and Ori had been celebrating peace and freedom at the Nova Music Festival. These six beautiful people were abducted into Gaza, several of them with critical injuries. They languished in miserable conditions for 328 days, then, on Aug. 29, were shot in the head, hands, shoulders and elsewhere in their battered and starving bodies," it reads.
"Israeli forces found their emaciated corpses two days later in a tunnel 65 feet under a Gazan child's bedroom. The tunnel was just over two feet wide and 5 ft. 6 in. high. It had minimal oxygen, no light and no plumbing. Their Hamas captors executed our loved ones at point blank range, exited the tunnel, and shut a bolted door."
"In captivity, Alexander, nearly six feet tall, dropped from 190 pounds to 132 pounds. Hersh, a couple inches taller, weighed just 116 pounds. Eden, 5-ft.-5, was found at 79 pounds," the families wrote in their letter.
The parents of the hostasges acknowledged that "it was Hamas that took our loved ones, tortured them, and pulled the triggers that murdered them. But many others failed to save them. Israeli governmental decision-makers had opportunities to reach negotiated settlements to release our loved ones and, for calculations they deemed strategic, they chose not to. These choices will be the eternal legacy of these men. But there are so many other people who could have done so much more to save them-and still others who will join them as accomplices in avoidable deaths if they stand by and allow malevolent entities to triumph over the passive words of people with power."
The tunnel in Rafah where the hostages were held and murdered
(Video: IDF Spokesperson's Unit)
They noted that for nearly over 10 months"many of us traveled the world and met politicians, diplomats, business titans, celebrities-people with power. They made promises, nodded, held our hands, cried with us, hugged us tightly...and then failed to deliver results."
They added that: "Celebrities met us in secluded rooms but asked that we never acknowledge publicly that they did so; they feared losing followers. Leaders of humanitarian aid organizations, including the International Red Cross and the World Health Organization, claimed they would like to intervene but could not figure out how. Two Muslim clerics confidentially assured us, wrongly, that our loved ones would be okay because harming hostages violated Islam; but they and too many other religious leaders were publicly silent. More than one of these many people with power assured us that the hostages would survive, that their return was only a matter of time. Some said our loved ones were suffering but surely not dying."
The families questioned why the world's movers ad shakers have not pressed the cause of the hostages. "Two hundred fifty-one hostages from 39 nationalities were stolen from their lives and from the world on Oct. 7. Why did the Presidents, Prime Ministers, and Foreign Ministers of those nations never stand, arm in arm, on a global stage and demand their release? Why are the names of the 101 hostages who remain in captivity not on the nightly news in countries around the world? Where is the global outcry calling for their release?"
"This is our clarion call now: There are still 101 hostages in horrific conditions in Gaza, and the time to save them is running out. Sympathetic words alone will not spare them the same fate as Almog, Alexander, Carmel, Eden, Hersh, and Ori. Now is the time for decisive, deliberate, meaningful action," they wrote.
The bodies of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Uri Danino, Almog Sarusi, Carmel Gat and Alex Lobanov were found in a tunnel in the Tel al-Sultan neighborhood in western Rafah. The hostages were murdered by their Hamas captors , after apparently fearing a possible rescue operation by the IDF that was operating in the area.
The bodies of the six hostages were found on August 31. An IDF investigation revealed that a day before, Hamas observers had seen soldiers approaching the tunnel, and ordered the terrorists to murder the six hostages. The terrorists shot the six hostages execution-style at close range.