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Israeli hostages in Gaza: Weiss sisters lost sister, parents to Hamas
The mood in the Tel Aviv apartment where 26-year-old Meytal Weiss spends much of her days is decidedly somber. Meytal is currently sharing the apartment with her younger sister Maayan, 23, who had traveled to Washington the previous evening to raise awareness about the Israeli hostages.
Though it is midday in Tel Aviv and the sun is shining, the blinds are drawn, and it is quiet inside. Meytal is clad in a black T-shirt and jeans, thus adding to the subdued atmosphere. Around her neck hangs a chain with a silver-colored metal square with inscriptions in Hebrew and English. The English inscription boldly demands in all caps, “BRING THEM HOME NOW!” The Hebrew words, perhaps more poetically, read “Our hearts are captive in Gaza.”
Perhaps more than most, Meytal’s heart has truly been taken captive in Gaza. Her mother and her 18-year-old sister, Noga, were taken captive by Hamas; and her father has not been seen since the morning of October 7. Meytal and her sisters Maayan and Noga were born and raised in Kibbutz Be’eri by her parents, Ilan and Shiri. Her mother was born in Be’eri. Ilan manages the infrastructure of the kibbutz, and Shiri is an account manager for its agricultural endeavors.
A brief smile flashes across Meytal’s face when recalling her childhood in Kibbutz Be’eri. “It is an amazing place,” she says. “From time to time, there were security issues,” she notes, “but we never thought anything like this would happen.”Meytal lives alone in an apartment near her parents’ home – “two or three minutes by bike” – and Maayan lives in her own apartment on the kibbutz. Noga, who graduated from high school in June, lives with her parents.
On the morning of October 7, Meytal was awoken by the sounds of explosions and red alert alarms. “We didn’t know that it was anything unusual,” she recalls. “There are a lot of explosions in Be’eri.” The alarms and explosions continued, but Meytal was still not unduly concerned. Eventually, she realized that terrorists had broken into Be’eri, but no one had yet understood the scope and seriousness of the situation.
“At 7:15 a.m., my father, who is on the emergency response squad of the kibbutz, left with his gun,” she continues. “We have not heard from him since then. All we know from his neighbors is that they saw him go out in his golf cart, holding his gun, and they said to him, ‘Be careful.’” Her father was on his way to unlock the kibbutz armory, but he never arrived there.
Meytal, Maayan, and Noga maintained communication by WhatsApp throughout the tragic events of the morning. “At 10:30 a.m.,” recounts Meytal, “Noga sent a message that the terrorists were breaking into the house.” Noga hid under the bed in the safe room, and her mother joined her in the room and closed the door. The Hamas terrorists broke through the safe room door and seized the girls’ mother.
FROM HER hiding place under the bed, Noga reported what was happening to her older sisters, who were still in their apartments. “They are kidnapping Ima! They are kidnapping Ima,” she frantically wrote to her sisters. The terrorists went through the house, taking whatever caught their fancy, and then they set the home ablaze.
“The door to the safe room was open, and the safe room had filled with smoke,” says Meytal. “After an hour, Noga wrote, ‘I can’t breathe.’ We wrote to Noga and told her to open the safe room window and go outside. She went out through the window, and we told her to run to the neighbors.”
Noga responded that she couldn’t go anywhere because everything was burning, and the area was swarming with terrorists. Meytal resumes her narrative of the WhatsApp exchange. “We wrote, ‘Hide in a bush, and sit quietly there.’” Earlier, Meytal had told Noga to send her location via WhatsApp so she and Maayan could find her.
“Because of all the craziness,” rues Meytal, “we didn’t see that she had sent us her location.” Eventually, Meytal and Maayan noticed that Noga had sent the location of her phone and saw it moving in the direction of Gaza. “At that time,” she says, “we thought that perhaps they had just stolen her phone.”
Meytal and Maayan remained locked in the safe rooms of their apartments until late Saturday evening. “The electricity in my safe room went out that afternoon, so I was trying to squeeze every bit of electricity from my phone to keep in touch with Maayan. We sent messages to each other every five minutes, indicating that we were okay.”
Meytal explains that while the terrorists spread throughout the kibbutz in their acts of random killing, for some reason they never attempted to enter the apartments where Meytal and Maayan were living. “It was just sheer luck,” she says.
IDF soldiers finally arrived at Meytal’s apartment at 5 p.m. that afternoon. “They knocked on the door and said, ‘It’s Golani. Open up.’” Meytal was concerned that they might be Hamas terrorists impersonating Israeli soldiers, so she didn’t answer the door.
Finally, at 11:30 that night, the soldiers returned. One of her friends called and told her that genuine IDF soldiers were at her door. She opened her apartment door and ran with them to an armored personnel carrier. The IDF also evacuated Maayan at that time.
Meytal had just enough time to grab her iPhone and charger when she left and had to leave everything else behind. “I was afraid for my life,” says Meytal, recalling her experience in the safe room on that day. “I never heard so many explosions and bullets. Even when they [the soldiers] took us out, there was still shooting.”
MEYTAL AND Maayan’s grandmother and uncles, who were visiting Kibbutz Be’eri for Simchat Torah, were not evacuated until Sunday afternoon. The Hamas terrorists in Be’eri murdered her uncle Gil Buyum and cousin Inbar. Twenty-nine of the captives are from Be’eri, and four residents are still missing.
The Hamas brutality extended to Ketem, the family dog, who was in the safe room with Meytal’s mother and sister. After the terrorists had seized Meytal’s mother, leaving the door ajar, the dog ran out of the room. They shot Ketem, and the dog’s charred body was later found outside the house.
A week after the horrific events, Meytal and Maayan received official word from the IDF that their mother and sister were among the 240 people who were kidnapped and that their father was officially missing. “Maayan and I are already mourning for him for a month because we don’t know if he is alive or dead,” says Meytal.
Still searching for answers
A month after the attack, Meytal is angry and searching for answers. “We thought that they abandoned us,” she relates. “It took the security forces a tremendous amount of time to arrive.”
She feels a similar sense of abandonment regarding the captives. “We feel that they are continuing to abandon us. There are 240 hostages. The longer it goes on, the harder it will be to free them,” she says.
Meytal is grateful for the support that she has received from organizations and the Israeli public. The apartment where we are speaking was lent to her by a Tel Aviv resident who offered it so that she and her sister could be near the center to participate in events held on behalf of the hostages. Meytal and Maayan divide their time between the Tel Aviv apartment and the Dead Sea hotels, where most of the Be’eri survivors are housed.
“We have to apply pressure to free the captives as soon as possible,” she says. Their father has Hungarian citizenship, and they recently obtained Hungarian citizenship for Noga in the hope that Hamas will treat them as Hungarian citizens and perhaps lead to an earlier release. They are in the process of obtaining Romanian citizenship for their mother, she reports.
Meytal dreams of seeing her parents and sister freed from Hamas captivity in Gaza. On that day, she says, “We will be with them, and we will be strong for them.”
Can she foresee the day when she can return to a rebuilt Kibbutz Be’eri? “Initially, says Meytal, “when we left Be’eri, they asked me if I would go back to Be’eri. At the time, I said I would never return to Be’eri or the South.”
“Now that time has passed,” she says, almost in wonderment, “I would return there. I don’t know if my mother and Noga will want to go back, but if it were up to me, I would return.” ■
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Abd Al-Salam Haniyeh, the son of the killed Hamas terror leader Ismail Haniyeh, claimed in an August interview with SamaQuds that his father rejected the “deal of a century” which would have seen the establishment of Palestinian statehood, according to a translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute.
Haniyeh Jr. claimed that the deal would have allegedly seen billions invested into Gaza.
“May our hands be paralyzed if we sign an agreement which would separate Gaza from Palestine,” the Hamas leader has allegedly said in response to the proposed deal.
The deal would have also encompassed the disarmament of Hamas.
Haniyeh also claimed that media coverage of the 2008-2009 conflict also saw increased convoys entering the Gaza Strip, which led to more active construction of terror tunnels.
Rejecting statehood
The Palestinian leadership has rejected multiple deals that would see the establishment of Palestinian statehood. In 1936, the British offered the Peel Commission, which would have seen a separate Arab state but which was rejected by the Palestinian leadership, according to CIJA.
In 1948, Palestinian leadership rejected the Partition Plan, which also encompassed an opportunity for statehood. In 2000, under Prime Minister Ehud Barak, the Chairman of the Palestinian Authority, Yasser Arafat, again rejected an offer of statehood. Finally, as referenced by Haniyeh, in 2008, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas rejected a land-for-peace offer.
Hamas officials have continued to speak against a two-state solution in conversation with Arab media, insisting on a singular Arab nation.
Ismail Haniyeh
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in July while attending the inauguration of Iran’s new president in Tehran.
While Israel neither accepted nor denied responsibility for the attack, Iran has promised to retaliate.
Right now is the closest Israel has been to a full war with Hezbollah since October 7.
This is true even in comparison to the period between July 30 and August 25, probably the second most dangerous period between the sides.
How do we know that the coming days, weeks, and months or two before the coming winter are so potentially explosive?
It is not just the statement that Defense Minister Yoav Gallant issued on Monday about his talk with US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in which he said that the possibility for a diplomatic solution with Hezbollah in the North is running out.It is not just the rumors that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu intends to replace Gallant with Gideon Saar as defense minister in order to have greater support for a major operation against Hezbollah.
It is not even just that Netanyahu’s main political opposition, Benny Gantz, continues to pound the prime minister as being too scared to risk a major battle in the North, which has left the 60,000 evacuated northern residents abandoned for nearly a year.
Confidence for major Hezbollah operation
These are the open and obvious signs – and frankly, much of Israel’s political and military class has been threatening to send Hezbollah back to the Stone Age since late early spring 2024.
It is also that the Jerusalem Post has received indications behind the scenes at both the political and military levels from sources who before were pouring cold water on the public statements, who are now signaling that the public statements are serious.
The reasons they give show how realities have changed a lot throughout the war.
For most of the war, the main reason not to get into a big fight with Hezbollah was to avoid distractions that might handicap the IDf from taking apart all 24 of Hamas’s battalions in Gaza.
As of August 21, Gallant declared Hamas’s last battalion in Rafah defeated.
Despite Netanyahu’s publicly threatening words and tone, another major reason that a big war with Hezbollah was not likely going to really happen until now was that the prime minister was privately terrified of how many Israelis might die from the expected Hezbollah onslaught of 6,000-8,000 rockets per day in the event of such a war.
That seems to have changed as of August 25.
On August 25, Hezbollah planned to launch several hundred and maybe up to 1,000 rockets on Israel, including on critical Israeli intelligence headquarters bases just North of Tel Aviv.
Netanyahu and the war cabinet instructed the IDF not to launch a full preemptive war on Hezbollah because, among other reasons, he was still worried about the impact on the Israeli home front.
However, something changed radically as a result of the events of August 25.
Since October 7, Netanyahu has doubted the IDF in areas where the objective risk was higher, even if the military supposedly would have the upper hand.
Sources have indicated that behind closed doors he was initially hesitant for each of the three invasions of Gaza; northern Gaza in late October, Khan Yunis in December, and Rafah in May.
Yet on August 25, the IDF did not just beat Hezbollah – it cleaned house.
Despite IDF’s substantive victories over Hamas and small tactical victories against Hezbollah, this was the first time that the IDF won a major and complex strategic victory over Hezbollah during this war.
It blew up the vast majority of the rockets and drones Hezbollah intended to attack Israel with before these threats could even be launched.
Hezbollah neither killed nor damaged anyone or anything of significance, while the IDF destroyed thousands of Hezbollah rockets.
Suddenly, Netanyahu has a newfound confidence that he can afford a major operation against Hezbollah with much fewer losses to the home front than he had expected.
What if – instead of 5,000 to 10,000 dead Israelis from tens of thousands of Hezbollah rockets over several weeks – he could hit Hezbollah harder than it’s ever been hit before – and destroy so many of its rocket launchers on the ground, that Israeli casualties might be not just smaller, but exponentially smaller?
Another factor was until now there was a good chance that Hamas would agree to a ceasefire and that such a deal would lead Hezbollah to unilaterally stop attacking Israel, just as it did during the November 23-30 ceasefire with Hamas.
While this is not impossible, the chances of a ceasefire with Hamas now are lower than they have been in several months after both sides have dug in on various issues after having seemed to have navigated around 90% of the obstacles.
All along, the only other option that has been discussed if diplomacy failed was a major Israeli operation.
And Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah is still furious about the killing of his military chief Fuad Shukr by the IDF on July 30, so no one views him as being more flexible now than in other periods.
Finally, the winter comes into play.
Sources have told the Post that if more than 4-6 weeks pass without an operation, it may be impossible or much harder to carry out such an operation until Spring 2025.
That would mean condemning the northern residents to another 6 months outside of their homes, something becoming increasingly untenable domestically in Israel.
Pressed that the IDF managed a successful invasion of Khan Yunis and the finishing off of Hamas in Shejaia in northern Gaza in the middle of winter 2023-2024, sources responded that the winter in mountainous Lebanon is far more fierce and difficult to manage than in the deserts of Gaza.
None of this means that a new broader war with Hezbollah is certain.
It would still be a massively risky proposition for Israel, Hezbollah, and also for the sides’ sponsors: the US as well as Iran.
The US could be drawn into a regional war or at least be seen as having failed to prevent a larger war after a year of diplomacy, something that could impact the current US presidential election.
Iran could lose Hezbollah as its major potential threat to hold over Israel should the Jewish state dare to think of attacking the Islamic Republic’s nuclear facilities. Hezbollah would undoubtedly remain the main player in Lebanon but might lose many of its most feared capabilities.
But this is clearly the riskiest moment in the North since October 7.
Time might have been on Israel’s side for significant portions of the current war, but it no longer is and likely has not been since April-May.
Yemen’s ballistic missile attack on Israel on Sunday made this clearer than ever.
Too much of the conversation about how long the war should go revolves around whether more military pressure can crack Hamas and get the Israeli hostages back versus whether a deal must be cut now, even if Hamas remains in power, so as to get the hostages back as time runs out for them.
Too little of the conversation takes into account how much more vulnerable Israel is becoming to attack on new fronts. Regarding these new fronts, Israel might never have taken direct hits or might have avoided taking direct hits for years or decades more if not for the length of this war, gradually exposing additional asymmetric holes in Israel’s military power.In order of current severity, Israel is facing seven fronts of attack: Lebanon, Iran, Yemen, the West Bank, Gaza, Syria, and Iraq.
That’s right: Gaza is now probably only the fifth most dangerous front militarily, even though Israel is still treating it as the most important in terms of military resources (and diplomatically, it may be the most important front.)
Originally, when longer meant from October until January, part of the purpose of being willing to drag out the war longer was to take the necessary time to defeat Hamas in different pockets of Gaza while leaving time to move the Palestinian civilian population from place to place in between invasions.
Another part was to use the mix of ongoing pressure and threats of continued impending military invasions and pressure to wear Hamas down into cutting a deal to return the Israeli hostages.
A third part was that a slower war using strategic air strikes, tanks, and artillery as a prelude to infantry invasions of various areas meant fewer infantry casualties.
The theory was that Israel’s air defense was strong enough to withstand whatever Hamas could fire on the home front up until the point that the IDF destroyed most of Hamas’s rocket firing capability around December-January.
But all of this was assuming the war with Hamas would end around January – the official estimate of all defense officials in October-November – and that the other fronts would stay relatively quiet.
But as the war drew on, Hezbollah started firing on a larger number of northern towns and cities; Yemen joined the war, at first only against Eilat, but eventually also striking Tel Aviv, and now aiming again for central Israel.
Iran started pushing much harder to threaten Israel from the West Bank, Syria, and Iraq, as well as encouraging its proxies in Lebanon and Yemen to take more risks against Israel.
Israel’s increasing tolerance for terrorism
Prior to the war, Israel had come to terms with a horrible, nearly 20-year-long conceit that it would be “ok” with low-level rocket and other attacks on its Gaza corridor villages as long as this did not touch the rest of the country.
From March 2022 until October 7, 2023, most of Israel came to terms with it being “ok” for significant waves of terror against Jews in the West Bank as long as not too much of it crossed the Green Line.
Starting on October 8, 2023, Israel decided it was “ok” for 60,000 northern residents to be evacuated from their homes and for whole towns and cities to be ghost towns, not just for a few weeks, but for nearly a year and counting with no deadline in sight.
Then, it was “ok” for Eilat to be attacked from time to time by the Houthis as long as the missiles were shot down outside of Israeli airspace.
On April 13-14, it became “ok” for Iran to launch over 300 aerial threats at Israel as long as a remarkable number of the threats were shot down, people were not killed, and Israel got to “deter” Tehran in a retaliatory strike against its S-300 anti-aircraft missile system on April 19.
It was “ok” that Israel got into a huge fight about a partial arms freeze with the US in May and that the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice, which had warned Israel but stayed on the sidelines from October to May, went more all out after the Jewish state in May.
It was “ok” that Hezbollah in August wanted to target 11 IDF bases and northern Tel Aviv key intelligence headquarters as long as the military preemptively struck hard enough on August 25 that Hezbollah’s main goals were thwarted.
The truth is that many of Israel’s nuanced approaches would have worked if the war had ended a long time ago or shortly after the nuanced retaliation.
And there were critics of Israel bashing it from November onward.
But when time continues to drag on, Israel’s enemies on many fronts have more time to dissect the way the IDF operates and when and where it lets its guard down more, and then get lots of chances to test the many potential holes. When time drags on, Israel’s legitimacy problems move from critics to its top allies like the US, UK, and France and metastasize with the international courts from a minor problem to a major crisis.
On Thursday of last week, I was in Rafah in Gaza. There were no Palestinians to be seen. No battles. No gunfire. I had my helmet and flak jacket, and they moved us around in a Namer armored vehicle. I felt as safe as could be. Of course, there are still thousands of Hamas terrorists in Gaza, and if anyone ignores them as we did on October 7, there could be another disaster in Israel’s future.
But right now, they can barely pose a threat to IDF forces a block away from them – and that only if the forces are not in Namers and lack air and tank support – let alone to anyone outside of Gaza.
This morning, waking up at 6:21 a.m. in Modiin to rocket sirens after months of quiet, not knowing whether Hezbollah or Iran was firing missiles at us, only to then learn that it was the Houthis, I felt far less safe than I had in Gaza.
When I traveled to Paatei Modiin Train Station Platform 4 this morning and saw the impact of shrapnel on an escalator I have walked on a thousand times, it was clear how many people could have been killed if the Houthis had fired an hour or two later than 6:21 a.m. This is without even getting to the mass mayhem and death that even one ballistic missile getting through to a populated area could cause.
How the war should end, and whether it should be with a quick ceasefire to get back the hostages or with a relatively quick but intense major invasion of Lebanon, synchronized with major strikes on other parties threatening Israel, is an important debate.
Yet, whichever direction is chosen, Israel should pick a direction and act to wrap things up rapidly and decisively.
And anyone who thinks that the war can just continue with no price on these other fronts beyond Gaza until after the US elections in November is kidding themselves and ignoring the writing on the wall on a grossly negligent and serial basis.
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