“I can’t even imagine what Hamas is doing to Karina. She’s a beautiful girl, she’s only 19, we know about all the women raped… I’m terrified to think about it. For me, every day is October 7th, the Saturday of the massacre. Only when all the hostages return home safely will it be a different day.”
Liza Shpoliansky is the cousin of Karina Ariev, 19 years old, Israeli intelligence unit soldier stationed at the Border Defense Corps military base in Nahal Oz. On October 7, fifteen female soldiers, who had no weapons because they were analysts and not fighters, were killed, seven were taken hostage and one of them, Noa Marciano, also 19 years old old, lifeless found in Gaza City near al-Shifa hospital.
Most of the soldiers serving in the monitoring unit on the Gaza border are women. They are called “the eyes of the army.” because they provide real-time information 24 hours a day, seven days a week: their job is to immediately send alerts when they register suspicious activity in the Gaza Strip. That’s exactly what Karina’s unit did: it warned of an impending Hamas attack. Unfortunately, the report was ignored, Israeli television Kan revealed.
“Karina is the youngest of us cousins, she is the little cousin. I know that her group raised the alarm about unusual movements in Gaza before October 7th. ‘Something happened,’ she had announced,” 26-year-old Liza told ANSA. The -year-old architect arrived in Rome on Wednesday with a group of relatives of the abductees to meet the Pope.
“Now there is an agreement for the release of 50 hostages. I don’t know if Karina will be released. “I don’t even know if she’s still alive,” Lisa says. “The last picture I have of her is in a video Hamas posted on Telegram on the evening of October 7th: She’s sitting in a terrorist jeep, her face is injured, she’s bleeding, near two other soldiers. Then nothing more,” the young woman despairs. She remembers the day of the attack: “Karina called her sister Alexandra at 7 a.m., she was crying desperately, she said that the military base was under attack, hit by a rain of rockets. The terrorists fired wildly and took control of Nahal Oz. He screamed that he loved them and that he should take care of Mom and Dad. Then another phone call with her parents: she asked them to move on with their lives, she was sure that the militiamen would kill her. She wanted to say goodbye to him.” At 7:40 a.m. the relatives lost all contact. Liza’s fear is twofold: that Karina was killed like Noa, or that the terrorists used her to disfigure Israel.
The feeling of helplessness of Lisa and all her relatives One hundred women (two thirds are minors) are being held captive in Gaza was summarized in a report submitted to the International Committee of the Red Cross by a medical team supporting the families of the hostages: “Sexual violence can be a tool of power in war, and captive women face particular risks. The woman’s body is it. “As a symbol of the nation’s body, to violate the woman is to violate the enemy’s entire nation,” said Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, a law scholar at Bar Ilan University and international women’s rights advocate.
“I know that when Karina returns home, she will no longer be the same person I grew up with. “She’s good, friendly, has a lot of plans, like all young people,” Liza becomes even more gloomy. “I try to imagine her return, a long journey where I get her some presents. I’m in so much pain, I’m waiting for her.”
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