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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The writer is a 27-year-old film student and dual Israeli-German citizen who lives in Tel Aviv
Amid the searing losses borne by an entire country after Hamas terrorists invaded southern Israel, massacring some 1,400 Israelis and taking more than 240 hostages, my family has the unfathomable honour of being one of the families with the most members taken hostage or killed.
Three of my family members were murdered on October 7, and nine were kidnapped and taken to the Gaza Strip. Two have since been released — leaving seven of my relatives hostage in Gaza.
On that terrible day, they were all on Kibbutz Be’eri, a kibbutz in the Negev that my grandparents founded after my grandfather fled Nazi Germany as a child in the 1930s. My father, his brother and two sisters grew up there, and both my aunts continued living in the paradise that became a killing ground on that terrible day in early October.
My father’s little sister, Lilach Kipnis, was a social worker who treated children and adults suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. She was murdered at her home, along with her husband, Eviatar. His caretaker from the Philippines, Paul Vincent Castelvi, was also murdered.
My father’s older sister, Shoshan Haran, founded the non-profit organisation Fair Planet to provide vegetable seeds and crop management training to farmers in Ethiopia and other countries in Africa. She was at her home with her husband, Avshalom, along with many relatives who were visiting for the holiday weekend.
Shoshan and Avshalom’s daughter — my first cousin, Adi Shoham, a gentle, sensitive psychologist — was there with her husband Tal, their eight-year-old son Naveh and their three-year-old daughter Yahel, whom I last saw swimming in the kibbutz pool wearing orange armbands. Avshalom’s sister, Sharon Avigdori, was also there, with her 12-year-old daughter, Noam.
We last heard from them at 10.30 on the morning of October 7, when Adi’s brother, Yuval Haran, received a message from his father, saying: “We’re in big trouble. I hope we make it. We love you.”
That morning, terrorists broke into their home, set it on fire, and, as we later found out, killed Avshalom. The seven other family members who were in the house that day — my aunt, my cousin and her husband and two children, my uncle’s sister and niece — are presumed kidnapped.
Two other family members, Judith and Natalie Raanan, who were visiting Israel from the US, were also kidnapped. Thankfully, for reasons that are not completely clear, they were released by Hamas on October 20.
Though we’ve barely begun to process the deaths of Lilach, Eviatar and Avshalom, we can’t sink into our mourning. We have seven more family members to save. Each hour of the day is dedicated to taking action to get them home. I don’t know where my family is. And I don’t know if they’re alive or dead.
I’m well aware that we live in a region with complicated politics. But when I cry together with our family friend, a Palestinian woman who came all the way up north to my aunt’s funeral with her homemade stuffed vine leaves, politics doesn’t come into it. This is a humanitarian crisis. Nothing about keeping innocent civilians in captivity is political.
My family lived in the south of Israel and experienced life in a war zone for many years. But they have never wished suffering on innocent civilians in Gaza or anywhere else. They have long been peace activists. And now they’re in captivity.
This situation is not only the Israeli government’s problem. This should keep everyone awake at night. My family holds European citizenships: German, Austrian, Italian. Many other hostages also have dual citizenship. But all the hostages are human beings, and that is the real reason Germany, Austria, Italy and the whole world should take responsibility for getting our families back.
Time passes fast. As I write these words, my family has been held hostage for almost a month. Our message is this: don’t forget us, the broken families. Help us get our loved ones home as if they were your own family. Bring them back before it’s too late. Bring them home now.