Throughout the 50 days Noam and Alma Or were held captive in Gaza, one thought kept the siblings going: reuniting with their mother, who they\u2019d been separated from on October 7 during Hamas\u2019 brutal attacks on their community. <\/p>\n
But when Noam, 17, and Alma, 13, were released together on Saturday, \u201cthis dream had been shattered by the fact that she was murdered,\u201d said the siblings\u2019 maternal uncle Ahal Besorai. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen they first crossed the\u00a0border and reunited with their\u00a0grandmother and\u00a0older brother, the first news\u00a0that they had to confront was the fact that their mom is no\u00a0longer alive.\u00a0And that was a terribly\u00a0emotional and traumatic moment\u00a0for them,\u201d Besorai added. <\/p>\n
The siblings\u2019 father Dror remains missing, believed captive in Gaza. <\/p>\n
The family had lived in the Be\u2019eri kibbutz, a close-knit farming community of about 1,100 residents, located close to the Gaza border. But the idyllic kibbutz became the scene of bloodshed and devastation on October 7, as one of the main targets for Hamas militants who poured over the border and laid siege to nearby communities. <\/p>\n
The militants murdered more than 120\u00a0Be\u2019eri residents, including children, and kidnapped others. They set people\u2019s homes on fire, looted, stole and destroyed what they could. In total, some 1,200 people, most civilians, were slain by Hamas militants across southern Israel that day. <\/p>\n
It was amid this chaos and terror that Noam and Alma were separated from their parents and taken hostage by Hamas. While in Gaza, they were taken to a house and kept in a room with another woman from their kibbutz, said Besorai, who also grew up in Be\u2019eri. <\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t describe in detail what the siblings had gone through, saying he didn\u2019t want to add to the burden of families with loved ones still held hostage. But, he said, \u201cit wasn\u2019t pleasant, to say the least. It was horrible.\u201d <\/p>\n
Hamas is believed to have held more than 200 hostages in Gaza prior to the releases negotiated with Israel. Under the breakthrough truce agreement, groups of\u00a0Israeli citizens and other nationals\u00a0have been\u00a0freed every day since last Friday,\u00a0while Israel has released\u00a0Palestinian women and children\u00a0detainees from its prisons, many of whom have never been charged or sentenced. <\/p>\n
The initial four-day truce was\u00a0extended\u00a0by an additional two days on Monday, as stories began to trickle out from the families of freed hostages, giving the first insights into what life had been like in captivity. <\/p>\n
Noam, Alma and the third woman in their room shared a diary, but the siblings weren\u2019t allowed to bring it with them during their release, said Besorai. In fact, they didn\u2019t realize they were being released at all, with Hamas taking measures to conceal that fact from the third hostage, he added. <\/p>\n
Militants took the siblings out of the room \u201con a ploy that they are going to the toilet, then handcuffed them, blindfolded them, took them to the car that took them to the place where\u00a0they are being handed over to\u00a0the Red Cross,\u201d said Besorai. \u201cThey tried to hide it from\u00a0the lady who stayed behind, all\u00a0on her own \u2013 so maybe (that) put some psychological\u00a0pressure on her.\u201d <\/p>\n
Even after what the siblings had endured, Noam \u2013 who Besorai described as a \u201cbeautiful person\u201d \u2013 voiced compassion for those in crisis-stricken Gaza, where more than 14,800 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks since October 7 according to data from Hamas-run health authorities there. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen they were walking (from the Hamas vehicle) to the Red Cross, and they\u00a0were holding hands, Noam told\u00a0his sister Alma, that he just\u00a0felt very sorry because they were\u00a0surrounded by Gazans, civilians.\u00a0He said, \u2018I feel so sorry for\u00a0them because they are staying\u00a0here, and we are going home,\u2019\u201d Besorai said. <\/p>\n
Now that the siblings are free, the family is focused on their recovery; they lost weight over the past two months, but are otherwise \u201csort of okay,\u201d Besorai said. Still, he worries about the toll that captivity has taken on them, and the trauma that may linger. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I spoke to them, the first\u00a0time I spoke to Alma, the 13-year-old niece, she had this enormously big\u00a0smile and glittering eyes when\u00a0she came to the Zoom call,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd this is what stuck in my\u00a0head:\u00a0What is behind these glittering\u00a0eyes?\u00a0What is deep inside them following this horrible ordeal?\u00a0It is just very difficult for\u00a0me to assess.\u201d <\/p>\n\n
Throughout the 50 days Noam and Alma Or were held captive in Gaza, one thought kept the siblings going: reuniting with their mother, who they\u2019d been separated from on October 7 during Hamas\u2019 brutal attacks on their community. But when Noam, 17, and Alma, 13, were released together on Saturday, \u201cthis dream had been shattered <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":12163,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12162","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}