Tel Aviv, Israel
Reuters
Choking back tears and shaking with anger, families and supporters of Israeli women and girls held captive by Hamas in Gaza lashed out at global women’s rights groups on Monday, asking why they have not spoken up for their loved ones.
A woman reacts, as people gather in front of the United Nations Headquarters in Jerusalem demanding for action to be taken to return the hostages kidnapped by Hamas during the 7th October attacks, in Jerusalem on 13th November, 2023. PICTURE: Reuters/Ammar Awad
Ofri Bibas Levy, whose brother Yarden, 34, was taken hostage with his wife Shiri, 32, and two children – Kfir, 10 months, and Ariel, four – holds with her friend Tal Ulus pictures of them during an interview with Reuters, as the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas continues, in Geneva, Switzerland, on 13th November, 2023. PICTURE: Reuters/Denis Balibouse
SISTER OF INJURED ISRAELI HOSTAGE PLEADS FOR MEDICAL ACCESS
In the last image that Ofri Bibas Levy saw of her brother on social media, he is clutching a bleeding head wound while being restrained in a headlock and dragged away by strangers.
Yarden Bibas, 34, and his wife and two young sons are among around 200 hostages seized by Hamas gunmen on 7th October during their deadly cross-border rampage in southern Israel.
More than a month since they were taken from their home in Nir Oz, Bibas Levy is in Geneva, Switzerland, alongside other families to meet senior officials of the World Health Organization and the International Red Cross to push for their release, or at least for medical access, she told Reuters.
“This is the first thing I want to shout and say that everybody has to condemn it and do whatever they can to bring them back as soon as possible. Because everyday there is it’s dangerous for them,” she said, wearing a T-shirt with a picture of the family with ‘KIDNAPPED’ in red letters.
“And also a cry for the health organisations saying somebody has to go and find out what’s their condition,” she said. “I don’t know if my brother is taking care of his injury. I don’t know if he’s dead or alive,” she said.
The ICRC and WHO did not immediately respond to questions about the two-day visit which Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen and Health Minister Uriel Menachem Buso are also part of.
Bibas Levy said she is worried her brother’s head wound could become infected and is concerned that her nephews, Ariel, four-years-old, and Kfir, 10 months, may not be getting the food they require.
She also voiced concern that they would be forgotten, as international attention shifts more to the desperate humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip amid Israel’s retaliatory military campaign.
“We can already see that people are starting to forget all the horrendous things that happened on the seventh [of October] and now focusing more on what’s happening right now in Gaza,” she said.
– EMMA FARGE, Geneva, Switzerland/Reuters
Dozens of the hostages captured by Hamas gunmen during their 7th October rampage through southern Israel are women and girls of all ages, from toddlers to the elderly.
Their families, during a media event in Tel Aviv, urged women’s groups, particularly those connected to the United Nations, to speak up and advocate for their release.
They also presented some of the health issues that the female captives are dealing with: breast cancer, heart disease, diabetes, asthma.
“Where are you when we most needed you,” said Yarden Gonen, whose sister Romi, 23, was shot in the hand as she was taken into captivity from an outdoor dance festival. “Don’t turn your back on our women, or on us.”
Reuma Tarshansky’s teenage son was killed in the Hamas attack on their home in Kibbutz Be’eri and her daughter Gali, 13, was taken captive.
“Every mother of an adolescent girl – and I’m sure you also have girls her age – who are going through changes, physical changes, hormonal changes, anything else a woman could understand and know, what a 13 year-old-girl goes through,” she said.
“I don’t know what my girl is going through over the past month. I can only imagine.”
The Hamas attack over a month ago sparked the war in Gaza, where Israel has since carried out a devastating bombardment and ground offensive.
“It is well known, well researched and well documented that women and girls suffer more during captivity,” said Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, an Israeli legal expert and a former vice-chair of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, who spoke at the event.
Two speakers singled out the group UN Women, which last month put out a report on the impact of the crisis on Palestinian women and girls in Gaza.
“Where are you? Where is your voice? Why is it not heard?” said Kinneret Stern, whose cousin Moran Stela Yanai, 40, was also taken captive from the music festival.
The rights of Israeli women, she said, “must be equal to those of every woman in the world.”
UN Women did not respond to a request for comment.
