Israeli Man Awaits Call From ‘Missing’ Daughters: “Being Raped, Or Dead”

When Ori last spoke to his girls, they were telling him they were afraid because they could hear a carnage of gunfire on Saturday early. He instructed his daughters, Hodaya and Tair, to remain silent while lying on the ground.

“I instructed them to lie face down on the ground. I told them not to even breathe,” Ori recounts.

However, he last heard four exhalations from one of his daughters. He hasn’t been able to reach their phones since then.

“When I close my eyes, I have no idea where they are. In a video posted by Israel on their official X account, Ori declares, “They are either being raped in Gaza or dead in a ditch somewhere.”

Two of the undetermined number of Israelis who have been taken prisoner and are reportedly being kept hostage during an unprecedented invasion of southern Israel by Hamas fighters are Ori’s daughters. Online videos show armed men dragging or marching through the streets with men and women, some of them bloodied and elderly.

One of the first places the Hamas fighters targeted was a music festival in southern Israel, close to the Gaza border. Hamas operatives massacred about 250 festivalgoers in cold blood while also kidnapping hundreds of others.

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Israel, however, is particularly sensitive to Hamas’ hostage-taking, which has complicated and, arguably, worsened the country’s response. According to Mr. Hecht, the presence of hostages and missing civilians has slowed down Israeli military operations.