For 10 days, Yael Nidam’s life has been on hold.
That’s how long it’s been since Nidam last heard from her husband’s sister, Rimon, a 36-year-old woman who last Saturday was seized from her home in southern Israel by Hamas.
Since a flurry of text messages sent early that morning, Nidam and her family have heard nothing but the near worst: Rimon’s home was found empty, drilled with bullet holes and blood. The following Saturday, the Israeli Defense Forces confirmed what Nidam already knew. Rimon and her husband, Yagev, were now in Gaza.
They are two of the 199 people who Israel says are being held hostage by Hamas, the U.S.-designated terrorist group that controls Gaza.
“We had one life before October 7th,” said Nidam, a 38-year-old doctoral student in city and regional planning at the University of California, Berkeley. “And a different life after it.”
The day Rimon and Yagev were taken, Hamas killed what is now being reported as more than 1,400 Israelis across the country — and the bloodiest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust. As of Monday, more than 4,000 Israelis and Palestinians have died, according to the Associated Press.
For so many anguished relatives, the horrific events of that morning were documented through texts from loved ones.
Nidam said that at 6:48 a.m. that Saturday morning, Rimon texted her mother in Hebrew: “I hear gun shots all around me, terrorists entered our kibbutz.” Just under an hour later, Rimon texted again. “We are all surrounded.” Ten minutes later: “I hear gunshots and blasts, there’s fire outside our house.” At 8:26: “They are shooting at me Mom.” And a few minutes after that: “I love you mom.”
Ever since, Nidam said, there has been silence.
“I don’t know if anger is enough to capture my feelings,” said Nidam, who moved from Israel to the United States in 2017 and resettled in the Bay Area three years later with her husband, Lotem Kirsht. “When we hear how bad things are, there’s no word to describe how to feel.”
Nidam described Rimon as a caregiver who is always taking in animals — from a blind cat to a limping dog — and nursing them back to health. Yagev is gentle, Nidam said, and a gifted musician. He loves to build and play his own instruments, such as the cello, flute, clarinet, guitar and piano.
As Israel has slammed back for the attack, conditions have deteriorated in the already crumbling Gaza Strip, the narrow, 25-mile-long territory that’s been governed since 2007 by Hamas. Before the war, more than 60% of the population was relying on international food assistance, according to UNRWA, the United Nations’ agency focused on Palestinian refugees. Now Gaza’s 2.3 million residents are struggling to find clean water, while both electricity and internet connections are scarce.
And as the war continues, more civilian lives — on both sides — will be lost.
“We need to know who is alive or dead. We need to know if people are being tortured,” said Nidam. “More than anything, I want to make clear: The hostages need to be released.”
From nearly 7,500 miles away, the lives of other Bay Area residents have been suspended, too.
Efrat Doell, who moved to the United States from Israel three decades ago, grew up on the Gvulot Kibbutz, a small, communal society just two miles from the Gaza border. Doell now lives in Oakland with her husband and 15-year-old son. But last Saturday morning, the 53-year-old woke up to an overflow of WhatsApp messages — and a group chat of her childhood friends.
“The messages said things like, there are terrorists, they are coming, they are raiding,” said Doell. “Get out, don’t get out, there are booby traps. And I was just like: What is going on?”
Immediately, Doell called her mother, who had since moved from her childhood kibbutz to another one six miles from Gaza’s border. As her mother tried to explain, Doell began to shake — and throughout it all, the messages kept coming in.
Galit, Doell’s close friend, had been taken hostage, along with her two teenage daughters and elderly mother. Another, Noam, said that his mother — who was about to celebrate her 75th birthday — was gone, too. And her other friend’s 20-year-old son, Yotam, was seized as well. The rest of the kibbutz was evacuated, crowding into hostels in sleeping bags and tiny mattresses, Doell said, with only the possessions they were able to flee with.
Doell had just visited Gvulot in May. Now her Israeli home had become unrecognizable.
“I’m going from feeling hopeless to feeling complete shock, like I don’t even know how to make boiled eggs, or function, or think,” said Doell. “You’re torn because this massacre has happened. And now, what do you do?”
Over the past week, both Nidam and Doell said they had been on their phones nearly every waking hour of the day, doing whatever they can to reach their families and friends in Israel. When she can, Doell has been trying to connect with other Israelis in the Bay Area, attending rallies and speaking up about what her friends and family are experiencing. In the meantime, she’s keeping in touch with all those she loves, including her mother and siblings scattered across her home country.
Nidam said she’s been trying to support her other sister-in-law, who was forced from her southern Israel home and into a hotel-turned-displaced persons camp near the Jordanian border with her three small children. That sister-in-law’s oldest, a 4-year-old boy named Negev, told his mother not to cry — that he would protect her from whatever is out there.
“Every phone call is stressful, because with every ring, you don’t know what you’re going to learn,” Nidam said. “I care for the hostages, and I care for the civilian population (of Gaza) … and I worry whether there’s a strategy for releasing the hostages in a way that’s effective but also doesn’t harm the civilian population.”
When asked if she had any hope for their release, at first, Nidam said she didn’t know how to answer.
“I don’t know what to think about what’s happening to the hostages,” Nidam said after a long pause. “But I know that if there is any chance of survival, Rimon will make it.”
Source: www.mercurynews.com