Everyone but him had already seen it. Noa is dragged into the Negev by two men, her eyes rolling back in despair. Noa was thrown onto the motorcycle and taken away, at the dawn of a dog day. Noa is held hostage in a house in Gaza, holding a bottle of water. Everyone knew that Noa was lost. Everyone except his father.
“As soon as I hear the sirens wailing on Saturday morning, I try to call her,” Yaakov Argamani collapses on the sofa: “She told me that she was going to this rave with her boyfriend, and I was immediately scared. Always the same message: “Unavailable”, both she and he. After an hour I received two WhatsApp messages: “Everything is OK”, “I’ll call you later”. Strange: What’s the point of calling later? So I come to the hospital to get news. They’re just telling me he’s not one of the injured. But while they’re telling me this, Noa’s roommate calls me: Look, they’re making a video… What video? I hope you’re wrong, it’s not true. A boy comes up to me and asks me if I want to see him…”
It was her. “So scared…scared…”. Yaakov cries. Look at the pictures of your daughter in the hands of Hamas. A reporter tries to keep an arm on his shoulder. “I always protected her… Now I can’t anymore…”. Yaakov’s black, muffled scream goes live on every television. It is the cry of Israel, which could not protect its children. The boys from Re’im Rave. The strip was a little further away: beer, music and then terror. At least 260 bodies have already been recovered.
Bar Kuperstein, 21 years old, worked as a caretaker at the party: “He arrived there on Friday evening – explains Aunt Ora –.” In a video published online, he stands next to a security guard who they killed first. I think they took him. “It was a moment,” says Liran, who survived even if he doesn’t know how. They came from the right side of the street. I danced. They got out of a large van and took out their machine guns. They shot at close range. A terrible thing. Anyone who could jumped into the car and fled into the desert. I drove like a madman.
There are a hundred Israelis in chains, an ambassador is counting them. Goods ready for exchange. Including women and children. Kidnapped at raves, on the streets, in kibbutzim, in rocket shelters, wherever it happened. “There could be more,” warns Hamas: There were some do-it-yourself kidnappers, “Palestinians of good will,” and in the end the rulers of the Gaza Strip say they don’t know exactly how many there are. The number of people missing on Black Saturday is still very high, 750, and in the chaos that still reigns there is not much difference between people kidnapped and who knows what. At police stations, family members come with used tissues, rolled-up socks and hair tangled in household brushes: “For DNA – explains one woman –. My daughter was at the rave party, the last time I heard from her she was in the car running away, she was screaming at me that they were shooting everywhere…” All we know is that they took the hostages in the hidden in tunnels under Gaza, built years ago to withstand prolonged emergencies, or in “safe houses.” They are in the hands of three different and very similar groups – Hamas, Jihad, Al-Aqsa Brigades – which are coordinated with each other but often pursue different strategies.
Find them, one word. Netanyahu wanted a crisis unit specifically for the hostages under the command of a reserve general, Gal Hirsch. The intervention of the Red Crescent was called for. A negotiating channel would have already been opened through the Egyptians, as happened for the soldier Gilad Shalit, and the Qataris would also be involved in the mediation: they have already replied from Hamas that there is nothing to negotiate at the moment. Not even for the injured abductees. Not even for children.
“We have never found ourselves in a situation like this,” admits Ilan Loman, spokesman for the Shin Bet secret service, which is currently being accused of being extremely unprepared: “The negotiations for Shalit were lengthy, they also needed a German.” mediator. Here’s something else. Much more complex. Because the strategies will be different depending on whether they are old people or children, living or dead soldiers.” Some ultra-Orthodox Jews, who do not touch their cell phones on Saturdays, have not seen the pictures of their kidnapped family members: they have them told about it. But all the videos posted by the strip are an attack on many families: the woman squeezed between two men on a motorcycle, the old woman deported on the golf car, the bloody soldier on the jeep, English and German citizens in the Holidays, even the Filipino and Nepalese workers and Thais were captured when they tried to work in the greenhouses… “Hamas will not only talk to the government in the next few days,” warns Uri Slonim, a judge with many years of experience in the Dealing with hostages, but she will also appeal to the hearts of family members. And it will all be very difficult.
The tensions are already noticeable. “They have abandoned us!” shouts Nissim, brother of a kidnapped person: “I only have one message from my brother: “Nissim, help me.” They are shooting at us. I’m bleeding”… Where is Netanyahu? Why doesn’t anyone help us?” “There is no state and no government – protests Alin Atias, Amit’s mother -. I will search the desert stone by stone to find my friend! As Yoni Asher When he turned on his Google locator to search for his wife, his heart almost stopped on Saturday evening. “In the last phone call he told me: There were terrorists in the house. Then the line went dead. It was closed with the two little girls their mother. They all disappeared. Thirty hours of darkness. Now the cell phone has told him where they ended up. A few words on the display: “Your contact is in Khan Younis, Gaza.”