Hamas kidnapped my 84-year-old father – I don’t know if he’s still alive

Imagine a member of your family being taken violently from their bed in the middle of the night.

Now picture that you have no way to contact them, to even find out if they are still alive.

This nightmare is the reality for 97 families whose relatives were taken on 7 October, 2023 – including mine.

Both of my parents were violently kidnapped by Hamas terrorists from their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz.

Before I moved to London to study at the age of 24, that same house in the south of Israel was my home. Now, I am an academic, artist, film-maker and British citizen but my days are mostly spent speaking with everyone and anyone who will listen to my plight.

While my 86-year-old mother was returned on humanitarian grounds 17 days after she was taken, an entire year later, my 84 year old father remains a hostage in Gaza.

We have had no sign of life from him since November last year.

Outside of his family and community, peace activism has been his singular life passion.

As a journalist, he has fought tirelessly with his writing and his actions for a two state solution and the possibilities of a sustainable life for both nations.

He believes in diplomacy and dialogue as the path to peace, and he has always approached the cause of Palestinian equality with grace, kindness and creativity. So I’m sure the irony that he was kidnapped by Hamas terrorists has not been lost on him.

In November, we were told by a released hostage that she had seen him alive in a warehouse in Gaza where vegetables were stored and another said they were held alongside him for the first weeks.

Since then, I’ve been back and forth between my home in London and my mum in Israel. Whenever I’ve visited, I’ve joined the other families of hostages who have spent every Saturday evening outside the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, which is now known as Hostages Square.

Thousands of us gather to hear speeches and performances by family members, local celebrities and musicians, and to provide support and community to one another. It punctuates our week and gives us an opportunity to pass another evening with something to do that could somehow help bring us closer to our loved ones. 

That’s why, when whispers were spreading like wildfire about the bodies of six hostages retrieved from Gaza at the hostage rally on Saturday 31 August, my heart stopped. 

Would my father’s name be on those whispered lists?

I held my breath as the night went on and the names were revealed. But soon, the relief I felt that my father’s name was not on that list was replaced with despair, fear, and sadness.

All six of the people retrieved were young – aged somewhere between 20 and 40 – vital and strong. 

They had managed to stay alive for 11 months, surviving torture in an underground tunnel in the most gruelling conditions, without air, light or basic sanitation and sustenance.

After all that, they were still cruelly executed by their captors in cold blood – shot at close range for reasons we will never know. What hope did that then leave for my elderly father?

For 12 months, I have lived on adrenaline and heartache. It’s not the big things – the sleepless nights, phone calls, interviews, delegations, meetings with politicians – that make it hard to catch my breath, it’s the micro details that really trigger me. 

It’s the single grey WhatsApp tick that appears when I send messages to my father, the constant desire to call him to ask his opinion about some small thing I’m working on (or about a big thing like the war), and the constant worry about my mum sleeping alone for the first time in over 60 years. 

It’s also been impossible to experience joy when you know someone you love could be being beaten, starved or even raped.

That’s why, whenever there is a development in the situation, one of my father’s favourite catchphrases: ‘War is the failure to make agreements in advance,’ rings in my ears. 

It has become my go-to answer for the questions that pop up when I watch the news about the dire situation, both for the hostages and the Gazan civilians. Everyone is suffering under the constant presence of war.

That circle of suffering is not just affecting people like me who have had loved ones taken. It includes anyone who grasps the magnitude of the realisation that no one is safe: not babies, not grandparents, not young adults dancing at a music festival.

Some families witnessed their loved one’s abduction or murder live on Facebook. Others were slaughtered in their entirety with parents and children being shot or burned to death together.

Unrelenting psychological terror has followed since 7 October, whether through videos of hostages, alive and dead, or the intolerable silence of no information. Yet there seems to be very little being done to bring them home.

Despite immense pressure from the hundreds of thousands of my fellow Israeli citizens who take to the streets multiple times a week to demand the hostages’ release, the Israeli government is deemed to be failing them, repeatedly.

I know that, as many of the hostages are dual nationals, other governments are pushing for a much needed deal to secure their release and, personally, as a British citizen, I’m grateful for the support I have received from both Sunak and Starmer’s governments.

For the past year – in what, as far as I am aware, is an unprecedented move – the government has effectively given support to non-British hostages who have close British relatives. They have allocated a team in the Foreign Office to assist the families with foreign partners to secure the hostages’ release.

We also get regular updates and the team has assisted in arranging multiple meetings with the Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary and other members of the UK Government, as well as with the Qatari negotiators including in Doha.

Knowing that the country, including the King and Queen who sent out a message of support at the end of September, is behind us gives us much encouragement.

But to be a year in and for the hostages to not yet be free – I have no words. 

Every war has two sides. But we must all agree that hostage taking is unacceptable for any reason, in any place in the world. That’s why I’m begging the world’s governments not to give up now. 

We need a deal to bring the rest of the hostages, including my father, home before it’s too late.

Military pressure has not delivered this. The remaining hostages must be returned for rehabilitation or for burial. This chapter must end so that we can finally find a path to peace. 

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk. 

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