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Families of Hamas’s hostages embark on global campaigns
Earlier this week, Palestinian social media accounts were filled with eulogies for the two men who kidnapped Yaffa Adar on the day of Hamas’s brutal assault on Gaza border communities last month. Adar, an 85-year-old resident of Kibbutz Nir Oz, has become one of the best-remembered hostages due to a video of her abduction that her captors filmed and published on social media. Now Israeli media outlets, which reported the deaths of the two men, were claiming that the pair were not directly affiliated with the terrorist organization ruling the Gaza Strip – a development that could influence any deal to release the hostages.
This was the second time in one bleak and sleepless month that the Adar family had received updates about their beloved matriarch through social and traditional media. The first report, the heart-curdling affirmation that their grandmother was indeed kidnapped and taken into Gaza, came in the form of a blurry video showing the elderly Adar seated in a golf cart, covered in a pink blanket and flanked by Hamas terrorists on all sides.
A day after the attack, Adva Adar, one of Yaffa’s grandchildren, published a snapshot of the video showing her grandmother and followed by a written plea for help: “This is my grandmother! Kidnapped into the Gaza Strip with nothing standing in the way [of the abductors]. Her name is Yaffa Adar, she is 85!! My grandmother – who founded the kibbutz with her very hands, who believed in Zionism, who loved her country, which abandoned her – was kidnapped. She is probably dumped somewhere, suffering from severe pain, without medicine, without food or water, scared to death, alone. No one is talking to us, no one has any answers, all the information we have was gleaned from videos that have been spread.”
The video left no room for doubt, and soon thereafter Adar and her family were officially notified by the government that Yaffa Adar is held hostage in Gaza.In the time that lapsed between then and now, four whole agonizing weeks passed by before they were told that Adva’s cousin Tamir Adar had been kidnapped, too. Leaving behind his wife and two children, who hid in the safe room of their home, the 38-year-old Adar, a member of the kibbutz’s emergency standby squad, set off to protect his community from the terrorists who had infiltrated that Saturday morning.
“At first we were told he was kidnapped. Then we were told that he was actually unaccounted for, that he is missing. Then we were updated again that there is a high likelihood that he had been abducted. We still have no idea what condition he is in; we don’t know whether he’s alive, dead, wounded. Nothing.”
In the interim, Adar decided that she cannot simply sit and wait. When she is not tending to her one-year-old baby daughter, she is constantly speaking to local and foreign press as well as to foreign diplomats and delegates in order to apply pressure on the international political landscape. Her hope is that these endeavors will eventually lead to the release of all 240 hostages.
“Since the second week of the war, my family has joined forces with the headquarters of the families of the hostages. Through them we constantly give interviews and hold meetings with envoys and representatives of countries from all over the world,” she tells The Jerusalem Post in a telephone conversation from her home in a moshav in the South.
“Two days after the attack I was approached by the Israeli Foreign Ministry and asked to join a meeting with the Czech foreign minister. Last week I traveled to Paris as part of a delegation of families in order to hold diplomatic meetings and speak to the European press,” Adar shares. “We believe that the international powers have sway over Hamas, as well as over Qatar, Turkey, and Egypt, who are all assumed to play a part in the negotiations. Their support also means Israel gets diplomatic backing.
“But that’s not the only reason [it is important to do this diplomatic work and speak out]. When people hear names and numbers, it all seems very distant. But when they can connect the name to a face, to a life story, to a family, it’s harder for them to look away. I feel it each time I talk about my grandma. When people suddenly understand that this video they saw of an elderly woman on a golf cart in Gaza is Yaffa, that she has children and grandchildren, that there are things she loved to do in life – they can’t remain indifferent.”
The beginning of the military ground incursion as well as Israel’s intensifying retaliatory aerial assault on Gaza, where her grandmother and cousin are held captive, are all causes for concern. Nonetheless, Adar says she “wants to believe that the military and the political powers have the hostages at the top of their priorities. I have to believe that because I need a reason to wake up in the morning. I need to believe that they will come back home. But I don’t have any special intel. I can’t know for a fact that when Israel is bombing Gaza it isn’t hurting my family. One can only hope that they know what they’re doing and are not jeopardizing my family.”
Her real concern, Adar admits, is the passage of time. “A month in captivity is way more than a woman my grandma’s age can or should bear. This is a race against the clock. My grandma suffers from all sorts of medical conditions: Heart failure, high blood pressure, kidney problems, four prolapsed discs – which means she can hardly sit, stand, or walk. She’s not a healthy woman. Time is not on our side.”
“It’s our mission to make the world care”
The 32-year-old Liri Roman, Yarden Roman-Gat’s brother, shares Adar’s feeling that time is of the essence. This sentiment has been captured by his family in a campaign it has started in Europe and in the US, where it is using the symbol of an hourglass to remind people overseas that each passing minute could be crucial for Yarden and the rest of the hostages.
Roman, an architect by training who works in hi-tech and lives in Tel Aviv with his husband, has been staying at his parents’ home in Givatayim since the first few days after the family learned that the eldest daughter, 36-year-old Yarden, was kidnapped into Gaza. The family home has become an operation center from which the Romans are strategizing, reaching out to international figures, interviewing with the press, and setting out on diplomatic missions.
Roman, in the meantime, has been focusing most of his efforts on caring for his sister’s three-year-old daughter, Geffen, who survived an attempted kidnapping with her father, Alon.
“My brother and sister have been traveling the world, speaking to leaders and waging this campaign. I decided with a heavy heart that I won’t join them overseas for the time being, because Geffen needs to be surrounded by the people she knows and loves in order to maintain a sense of normalcy; she’s already been so traumatized,” he explains, adding that his little niece is fully aware of the horrific ordeal she and her parents had gone through. “When she plays with her toys she reenacts the scenes she has been through, and she keeps asking for mommy, whom she knows is ‘lost.’”
On October 7, Yarden, a physical therapist, was celebrating the holiday weekend in Be’eri with her partner and daughter. The trio, who previously lived on the kibbutz, had left it a month earlier due to Yarden’s concerns that it wasn’t a safe place to raise a child. They had just returned from a family trip to South Africa, a long-awaited vacation that came in the wake of the death of Yarden’s mother less than a year ago.
Yarden, Alon and Geffen were all kidnapped by terrorists and taken into a vehicle that sped toward Gaza. At the last minute and under heavy fire, the couple jumped out of the car in an attempt to escape and started running for their lives. Yarden, who had been carrying her toddler in her arms, realized that Geffen would have a better chance of surviving if Alon carried her. She handed her daughter to him and tried to hide. Alon kept running, with Geffen in his arms, until he was able to reach what he thought was a safe hiding spot. After many hours of hiding with his daughter in an open field, he came back out, walked in the direction of the kibbutz and was able to join an IDF force that was in the area. A thorough search mission led by the family in collaboration with the military in the following days made it evident that there was no trace of Yarden left behind. Since then, she has been assumed kidnapped by Hamas.
At first the family directed its diplomatic efforts mostly at Germany because Yarden holds German citizenship. In the past month it has expanded its campaign, gearing it at anyone who would listen. The campaign includes a website, an Instagram account that has amassed a large following, hundreds of interviews given to the media by Yarden’s three siblings, mass rallies in large cities such as New York and Berlin, and meetings with diplomats from all over the world.
“We’re taking matters into our own hands,” says Roman, “out of the understanding that this is an event of a scope our country was simply unprepared for. We constantly speak to officials who are well-versed in handling cases of hostages, and they all say no one was prepared to deal with the sheer amount of hostages currently held in Gaza. The rules of the game have changed; we live in a world where Hamas uploads videos of abductions on TikTok.”
Roman says his family will continue doing its best to spread Yarden’s story “because we know that public opinion influences the decisions of policy-makers. When we just began our campaign vis-à-vis Germany, we were making moves that the government wasn’t making yet. Germany is an important and influential country, and now it’s on our side. But where was the state in all of this? So we said: ‘Ok, we won’t wait.’ We literally met with anyone important who was willing to listen, because we wanted them to be better informed and much more empathic when they finally met with [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu.”
The Roman family is also acting to keep the hostages on the minds of Israelis, too.
Asked what he would tell his sister if he could talk to her, Roman says: “I would tell her that I’m doing my best to watch over her daughter. I would tell her that her daughter is alive and well, because she [Yarden] doesn’t know that, and I imagine she must wonder all the time whether Geffen made it out alive.
“People here need to realize that it’s no one’s duty to care. It’s our mission to make the world care about the hostages,” Roman concludes.
“I feel sorry and sad for the Palestinians of Gaza because I know that Hamas doesn’t care about them. So when I approach my task of explaining to the world what happened to my sister and to the other hostages, I keep in mind that this terror organization has changed the rules of the game, and they are treating both Israeli civilians and their own people as pawns in that game.”
The United Nations called the situation in northern Gaza “desperate” on Monday, sparking renewed criticism of Israel a year after it launched a major offensive against Hamas.
The Israeli military issued evacuation orders for northern Gaza, citing intelligence that Hamas was regrouping. This followed an offensive on the Jabaliya refugee camp.
Residents were urged to relocate to humanitarian safe zones. However, reports suggest that many have not followed the orders, likely due to exhaustion from repeated displacement throughout the year-long war. The UN estimates nearly 2 million Palestinians have been displaced, many forced to move as the Israeli army withdraws and re-enters various parts of the territory.
Humanitarian aid to Gaza, largely controlled by Israel through its oversight of all entry points, has been a contentious issue within Israel since the war began in October last year, drawing international scrutiny and criticism.
Israeli media reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is considering “The General’s Plan,” proposed by retired army generals. The plan calls for halting humanitarian aid to northern Gaza to increase pressure on Hamas and secure the release of 101 Israeli hostages. It assumes that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar has not relented under the yearlong military campaign and suggests that withholding aid might force the desired outcome. The plan also proposes indefinite Israeli military control of the area. Netanyahu has denied any intention to permanently control or resettle Gaza, which Israel evacuated in 2005.
“What we are seeing seems like either an attempt to implement the first part of the plan, or a trial run of it,” Michael Milstein, head of the Palestinian Studies Forum at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, told The Media Line. “But the Palestinian population is not cooperating, and it doesn’t seem to be working,” Milstein added. “It is unclear how such a plan will promote Israel’s goals. “The plan seeks to completely clear the area of civilians. Any who remain would be considered combatants by the Israeli army, allowing troops to engage them. The army has declined to comment on whether it is following this plan or acting under other orders.
“The Hamas terrorist organization uses the residents of Gaza as human shields and prevents them from obeying IDF calls to move to safe areas,” Lt. Col. Avichay Adraee, the Israel Defense Forces’ Arabic spokesperson, posted on X Monday, blaming Hamas for the lack of civilian cooperation.
Preventing Hamas from regrouping
The army’s latest move to reposition in Gaza is part of ongoing efforts to prevent Hamas from rebuilding. Following an intense ground operation early in the war, the IDF has significantly reduced its presence, with relatively few troops now stationed in Gaza. “This represents a moment of strategic embarrassment,” said Milstein. “Israel has been at an intersection for a long time without making a decision. The doctrine in which it believed it could topple Hamas without 24/7 occupation of Gaza is a failed one.”
With its forces engaged in a war against Hezbollah in Lebanon and possibly facing an imminent confrontation with Iran, the Israeli military is likely too stretched to maintain a larger presence in Gaza.
“This leaves no other option than to make a deal with Hamas, that would see an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the release of hostages,” said Milstein. The IDF controls several areas in Gaza, while leaving others under Hamas’ control. Israel forces are present at Gaza’s border with Egypt, the perimeter along the Gaza Strip, and in the northern part of the territory.
Hard-liners in the Israeli government are advocating for a full occupation of the Gaza Strip, while Israel faces mounting criticism over the humanitarian situation in the impoverished territory.
“The UN reports that no food has entered northern Gaza in nearly 2 weeks. Israel must urgently do more to facilitate the flow of aid to those in need. Civilians must be protected and must have access to food, water, and medicine. International humanitarian law must be respected,” US Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris posted on X Monday.
The IDF Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories reported that 83 trucks carrying humanitarian aid and 12 gas and fuel tankers entered Gaza on Monday. The war between Hamas and Israel began after Hamas launched a large-scale attack on southern Israel. The assault, which shocked the nation, left 1,200 Israelis dead, thousands injured, and over 250 taken hostage. Since the war began, 154 hostages have been released, some of them deceased. The fate of the remaining hostages remains unclear, with dozens believed to be dead.
UNOCHA figures, based on reports from the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, indicate that over 42,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began. While Israel asserts that many of the casualties were armed combatants, international and Palestinian sources report a high civilian death toll. These figures have not been independently verified but have nonetheless led to criticism of Israel’s conduct in the war.
As the war rages, Israel continues to pound Gaza in the hopes of achieving the two main goals its government has set for the war— toppling Hamas and securing the release of hostages. A year into the conflict, international organizations have consistently warned that Gaza is on the brink of famine. Israel, however, denies any threat to food security, insisting that it maintains a steady flow of humanitarian aid into the territory. Some Israelis have advocated using humanitarian aid as leverage to pressure Hamas, which currently controls its distribution, thereby maintaining its grip on Gaza. Several Israeli officials have suggested that prominent Gaza families or clans could govern the territory instead of Hamas. However, the Israeli government has ruled out reinstalling the Palestinian Authority (PA) as a replacement, citing its support for terrorism and its failure to condemn the October 7 attack on Israel.
“If Palestinians had to choose between Hamas or Gazan clans to rule Gaza, they would choose Hamas,” Mkhaimar Abusada, chairman of the Department of Political Science at Al-Azhar University in Gaza and visiting scholar at Northwestern University, told The Media Line. “If Israel would allow the PA to run Gaza again, the goal of marginalizing Hamas will be easier. One must keep in mind that the PA would not step foot in Gaza without Hamas’ approval.”
“The Israeli army, which has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, is not trusted by Gazans to distribute aid,” Abusada added. “The overwhelming majority of them look at the Israeli army as murderers and they will not accept food from them.” However, if left with no other option, Gazans may be forced to accept aid from the Israeli army.
“There is no competition for Hamas in Gaza,” said Milstein. “They continue to control the area, through civilian governance. They survived Israel’s massive offensive and are still the dominant force in Gaza, they survived by being like chameleons successfully changing constantly. Without a full occupation, this will not disappear despite Israel trying to make it so.”
Hamas ousted the PA from Gaza in 2007. Violent images of Hamas fighters throwing PA employees from rooftops in Gaza City highlighted the deep animosity between the two rival Palestinian factions. Years of reconciliation efforts have failed, despite repeated claims to the contrary. However, recent negotiations in Cairo have reportedly brought the two sides closer to an agreement on postwar Gaza.
“Hamas has accepted in principle to allow the PA to run the Gaza Strip, they have still now agreed that Hamas is more open to this scenario,” Abusada said.
The likelihood of this scenario remains slim, due to a complex set of circumstances that have significantly weakened the PA over the past decade. With Hamas still in power in Gaza and the Israeli military stretched too thin to remove them, humanitarian aid remains at the heart of the conflict. With no signs of a ceasefire on the horizon, civilians will continue to pay the price.
Michael Bar Zohar, at 86 one of Israel’s great and most prolific historians, especially regarding security issues, published a book called “Iron Swords, Bleeding Hearts” less than a month ago on the failures leading up to October 7 and the current war.
The book closes just as Hezbollah is considering its response to the IDF’s killing of its military chief Fuad Shukr on July 30, which turned out to be the August 25 IDF rout of Hezbollah’s attempted retaliation, which itself in turn pushed Israel into having the audacity to decapitate Hezbollah starting in mid-September.
Bar Zohar uses essentially all open sources on the most current events, but has a priceless number of anecdotes and unique perspectives from his exclusive coverage of Israeli titans like David Ben Gurion, Shimon Peres, and others as he leads into how Israel and the Middle East got to where they are now.
But the most important aspects of Bar Zohar’s book are forward-looking: How must Israel, and the West for that matter, understand the challenge of fundamentalist Islamist groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran?With the anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 invasion passing this past week and the invasion of Lebanon moving forward at full throttle, the most practical lessons from Bar Zohar probably have to do with connecting those two events in terms of understanding how the current war in Lebanon must end.
Extrapolating from Bar Zohar’s narrative, predictions, and views, the war in Lebanon must end with Israeli security being dependent on Jerusalem and its allies being able to enforce its security and not merely on hopes of “converting” Hezbollah into accepting Israel and joining the Western world.
Bar Zohar writes, “I began writing this book on October 8, 2023, after a sleepless night. I had turned off my TV set after watching, on a foreign channel, the horror in the settlements at the Gaza border, and, for a change, the boisterous street protests in favor of Hamas in foreign capitals.”
“I knew that this crucial chapter of history would be distorted and falsified by lies and fake news, as well as emotions, blind fanaticism, insane hatred of some and foolish adoration of others. I felt that my duty was to tell the truth about these apocalyptic events that shook the world. But to tell the truth now, today, not in a year or two or five. Now.” he continues.
Here, Bar Zohar was cognizant that October 7 was not just about killing 1,200 Israelis, taking 250 hostages, and the failures that led to this – but how this event and Israel’s response would reshape the Middle East afterward.
Failures that lead to October 7
Aside from a harrowing account of the numerous political, intelligence, and operational failures leading into October 7 which are meticulously laid out in the first 16 chapters, there are some later chapters which paint some of the broader trends which have developed since November 2023 and still confront Israel now.
His coverage of Israel’s first major assassination in Lebanon on January 2, 2024 – of Hamas deputy chief Salah al-Arouri – is indicative.
Recounting the event, he says, “Sheik Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, took Al Arouri’s assassination very seriously. Only a few days before, he had met with Arouri and advised him to beware, as the Israelis targeted him. For Nasrallah, the location of the hit was symbolic. During the Second Lebanon War, Israeli warplanes had pulverized the Dahia neighborhood, where the headquarters of Hezbollah were located.”
With a bit of unforeseeable irony and almost prophetic foreshadowing for how Nasrallah eventually met his end from an IDF air strike in Dahia on September 27, Bar Zohar continues. “Nasrallah himself had to run for shelter to an underground bunker in Dahia. After the war ended [referring to the 2006 Second Lebanon War], he stayed in his bunker for years, avoiding any public appearances. Even his speeches were broadcast from the bunker. He thought he was safe in Dahia – and here [after Al Arouri was killed], all of a sudden, he found out that Israel could readily come and go as it pleased. If Arouri was not safe there, neither was Nasrallah. The assassination also proved that Israel had very reliable spies in Beirut.”
Bar Zohar recounts how Nasrallah was taken by surprise when the IDF killed Al Arouri as well as a few days later when the IDF killed Wissam Al Tawil, the deputy commander of the elite Radwan unit, with Al Tawil also being the brother of Nasrallah’s third wife, Hadda Al Tawil.
Nasrallah struck back at some IDF bases in the North, but without causing significant damage and in a relatively weak way, with Bar Zohar commenting, “These Hezbollah attacks were very close to acts of war, but did not cross the blurred line between a border conflict and a war…But once again the upshot failed to meet expectations,” for what Hamas had hoped for from Hezbollah in helping them fight Israel.
The bottom line is that, as indicated by these earlier rounds, once Israel switched gears into hitting Nasrallah much more complicated, he was not ready for the IDF’s fury and was taken by surprise – much as he had been by Hamas’s invasion on October 7.
Next, Bar Zohar briefly explores in one of his last chapters the implications of the Iranian attack, the Israeli counterattack, and the help Israel received from Sunni allies to defend itself in April.
He observes, “And yet, the most important result of these tumultuous days was the baptism of fire of the new American-Arab-Israeli coalition that augured a new era in the Middle East. A new era is indeed beginning, bringing tremendous changes to the lives of millions and carrying a faint glimmer of peace. The new coalition, strengthened by new Israeli leaders, may augur the creation of a new Middle East.”
“The coalition that defeated the Iranian juggernaut in the sky may transform into a solid alliance that could reshape the entire region, establish a new administration in Gaza, and bring moderation to these embattled lands. This is the dream for the future,” he continues.
But by the end of the book, Bar Zohar notes that the killing of Shukr, as well as the killing of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, were “the start of a new stage in the war, with the focus moving from the Gaza strip to the North. That seemed to be the fading away of the Iron Swords and the beginning of a new confrontation between Israel, America, and their allies – and the ‘Axis of Evil’ in the north.
In terms of how the conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iran should end, he warns that military force will be continually needed alongside any diplomatic efforts and cautions not to leave too much based on “deals” with such parties.
“One can reason with extremists as long as they understand logic and have a modicum of common sense. Israel could negotiate with the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, and his supporters, as their movement, Fatah, was a nationalist, not a religious one. But when the rival’s ideology is based on religion – no reasonable arguments can influence it,” writes Bar Zohar.
Although Bar Zohar was formerly a Labor party member and Arafat was far from an ideal peace partner, his book’s conclusion is clear that any final security situation with Hezbollah and Iran must be enforceable by the Israeli military.
A diplomatic deal may end the conflict as all conflicts end, but after seeing how Hezbollah abused UN Resolution 1701 for 17 years, Bar Zohar clearly feels that resolving the current conflict with Hezbollah cannot rest merely on an, even strengthened, international peacekeeping force hopefully doing its job.
He finishes with a dark prediction that “The Israel-Hamas confrontation is the first battle of a new World War, a war between the modern world and the ferocious fanatics of radical Islam. A new kind of war. Not the wars to which the world has grown accustomed, fought with armies, tanks, planes, and infantry firing and charging and shouting Hurray – but a war against enemies who aim to destroy the free world from within.”
Special forces killed four terrorists in a vehicle during an operation in Nablus in the West Bank, army radio reported on X/Twitter Wednesday evening.
They were seen armed moments before they were killed, footage published by army radio showed.
A source told Kan that the terrorists killed in Nablus were a squad of terrorists from the Balata Camp that were preparing to carry out an attack against Israelis.4 מחבלים חוסלו ברכב במהלך פעולה של כוחות מיוחדים בשכם, כך הם תועדו רגע לפני שנהרגו pic.twitter.com/mFUGTHFqYg
— הוד בראל Hod Barel (@hod_barel) October 9, 2024
Riots in Nablus
Riots broke out on Wednesday afternoon, during which the IDF killed four terrorists following intelligence provided by the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), Maariv reported.
Commander of the Balata Battalion of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade (which is aligned with Fatah) Issam a-Salaj was allegedly eliminated in the operation, Walla noted.
This is a developing story.
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