Rut Hodaya Perez is in no condition to be held hostage in the Gaza Strip.
Rut, a 17-year-old Israeli girl who suffers from myotonic dystrophy, cannot walk and is in a wheelchair. But that didn’t stop Hamas gunmen from abducting her from a trance music festival near the Gaza border on October 7 during their series of kidnappings and massacres.
Ruth is now one of the large and diverse group of prisoners that Hamas is believed to have dragged back to its underground labyrinth of tunnels in Gaza.
“She wasn’t cut out to live in a place like this,” said her sister Yamit.
It has been two weeks since Hamas attacked Israel, massacring more than 1,400 people and kidnapping more than 200. As fears grow for the safety of all hostages held in conditions that would test even the strongest, concerns are particularly acute for the most physically vulnerable, like Ruth.
From left: Eric Perez, Rut Hodaya Perez and Yamit Perez. Source: Perez family
On Friday morning, Israeli military officials said that “most” of the hostages were alive, and on Friday evening everyone held with their relatives in Gaza received an additional glimmer of hope when Israel and Hamas announced that two hostages, a mother and a daughter , who were both American-Israeli citizens, were released.
American officials said representatives from Qatar, an American ally that has good relations with Hamas, helped persuade the group that controls Gaza to release Judith Raanan, 59, and Natalie Raanan, 17. It was not clear why the Raanans were released before others.
But for everyone who is still left, It is almost unimaginable what each of them, especially those most in need, must go through.
They are held at gunpoint by the same group that massacred their friends and loved ones. They are trapped in the densely populated enclave of Gaza, which Israeli warplanes are bombing relentlessly. All around them, food, water and medicine are running low and fear, anger and hatred are escalating. Everyone in the Gaza Strip, home to two million people, is facing a humanitarian crisis, and governments around the world have been urging Israelis to allow urgently needed aid, which finally began Saturday morning.
Natalie Raanan and her mother Judith Raanan spoke to President Biden on Friday after their release by Hamas in a photo released by the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem. Photo credit: US Embassy in Jerusalem, via Agence France-Presse – Getty Images
Israeli officials said Hamas took away at least 20 children, including infants; more than a dozen people in their sixties, seventies and eighties; and people suffering from Parkinson’s disease, heart problems, diabetes and cancer. In addition, several hostages were seriously injured by gunfire and grenades in the terrorist attack.
Family members and international organizations are begging Hamas to show mercy and release the old, the young, the sick and the wounded first.
The International Committee of the Red Cross is one of the groups wanting to help. Red Cross officials said they reached out to Hamas leaders in Doha, Qatar, within two days of the attack.
“The starting point — and it’s hard for me to get away from it — is that there are people who should never be there,” Fabrizio Carboni, the organization’s regional director for the Middle East, said in an interview last week.
Over the past 10 days, he said, the Red Cross has met in person and had numerous telephone conversations with Hamas representatives, but “given the level of violence in Gaza, I think it is extremely complicated for us to do our job.”
Red Cross officials said they were asking Hamas leaders to provide “evidence of life,” such as a message, phone call or video, that would prove that each person believed to be being held captive is alive is. The Red Cross is also calling on Hamas to allow medication and immediately release hostages with urgent health needs, like Ruth.
“They should all be released, but those with special medical conditions should be released even more often than the others,” Mr. Carboni said. “There is no easy way to provide the medical assistance they need in Gaza today,” he added. “We asked about it. But today we are far from that, very far.”
As part of a demonstration in Tel Aviv before Shabbat, a long table was set up with 203 empty chairs and place settings, one for each hostage believed to be held in Gaza. Source: Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times
It was an agonizing week full of ups and downs for the hostages’ families.
Tuesday’s catastrophic explosion at a crowded hospital in Gaza sparked passions – and anti-Israel sentiment – around the world. Israel blamed the explosion on a rocket fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another militant group in Gaza, while Hamas officials blamed it on an Israeli airstrike. The statements from both sides could not be independently verified, but the bottom line was that there was immense suffering in Gaza and an increased risk to the safety of the hostages.
Over the next few days, Israel continued to build up its forces along the Gaza border and prepared for the invasion. Many families of the prisoners are praying that the Israelis will postpone the ground offensive until all the hostages are freed.
There are few good options. Tactical experts consider a rescue attempt to be too dangerous. Hamas has miles of underground tunnels in Gaza, and experts believe the hostages have been divided up and are being closely guarded in this labyrinth.
Adding to the bleak picture is the news that came at the end of last week that Israeli soldiers had found bodies of Israelis along the Gaza border fence. It is not clear when they were killed – while in captivity or in the early moments of the October 7 attack. Whatever the case, the families of the hostages are now under enormous stress, answering every call with trembling fingers, not knowing whether they are about to find out whether the people they love most are dead or alive.
And for the hostages who are sick or injured, time is not on their side.
Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, a California native who moved to Israel with his family 15 years ago, is a prisoner in Gaza whose arm was blown off by a grenade in the attack.
Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, a California native, in a picture taken before the attack. He was filmed being loaded into a Hamas truck while blood dripped from a homemade tourniquet around his left elbow. Photo credit: Courtesy of Rachel Goldberg, via Associated Press
A video captured him being loaded into a Hamas truck with blood dripping from a stump above his left elbow.
Rotem Revivi, a close friend, said it was “obvious” that if Mr. Goldberg-Polin’s arm was not treated properly, “he could no longer be with us.”
Hagai Levine, an official with the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, an organization set up in Tel Aviv to help the families of the hostages, believes the International Committee of the Red Cross “needs to do more,” such as keeping a list of all the hostages must publish missing people and hostages. Red Cross officials say they are trying to obtain this information, drawing on their experience from other conflicts in the Middle East.
The organization helped repatriate thousands of prisoners during Israel’s decades-long wars with its neighbors. It maintains an office in Gaza, where, Mr. Carboni said, its people are housed in “horrible conditions” to enable the release of hostages, as they did on Friday evening when Hamas handed over the Raaners and turned them into a purring state According to a short video released by Hamas, it is a truck.
Avichai Broduch, whose wife and three children were kidnapped by Hamas militants, at a demonstration calling for their release in Tel Aviv. Photo credit: Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times
Hamas initially threatened to execute a civilian hostage every time an Israeli airstrike hit Gazans “without warning in their homes,” but made no further such announcements. Although Hamas has said little about the detainees, it is clear that the hostages are of great value to them.
Israeli officials said Palestinian Islamic Jihad was also holding some prisoners. Musab Al-Breim, a spokesman for this group, which is known to work closely with Hamas, said this this week “There is only one way the prisoners can return, and that is if our prisoners are released,” referring to the thousands of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons.
Hostage experts say this is one of the most complicated hostage situations ever. It involves a huge group of prisoners held in a raging war zone, with hostages from many different countries ranging in age from under 1 to over 85, including civilians kidnapped from their homes or a group in the desert, as well as active Israeli soldiers captured from burning tanks.
Even the simplest communication, such as a phone call with prisoners, is difficult. “Non-state armed groups that we are in contact with are very, very careful about how they contact us because they know that technology can be used to track them,” Carboni said.
But aside from that, Mr. Carboni said, “it is unthinkable” that so many children were kidnapped.
He added that “this outrage does not come at the expense of our outrage at the children of Gaza,” who, he said, have grown up with “incredible brutality and violence.”
“We cannot add violence to violence,” he said. “We have to stop this.”
A protest in Tel Aviv demands the return of more than 200 hostages believed to have been seized by Hamas. Credit…Amit Elkayam for The New York Times