Families of Israel hostages fear the world will forget. So they’re traveling to be living reminders
Associated PressPARIS — The photo of the white-haired woman in a golf cart, wrapped in a purple blanket and flanked by a gunman, was among the first to emerge of the hostages seized during the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. “They have nothing.” Israel’s overwhelming military bombardment of Gaza, families say, raises questions about whether destroying Hamas or rescuing hostages is more important — or whether the two aspirations are mutually exclusive. It should be the only thing on the table, and it doesn’t feel like that is the sentiment,” Ayelet Sella, who has seven family members held hostage in Gaza, said at a news conference with the families of other hostages in Paris on Tuesday. … Think what the consequences of this will be.’ And I don’t see evidence of that at the moment.” On Friday, after a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ruled out “a temporary cease-fire that doesn’t include a return of our hostages.” In Atlanta earlier this week, during an event that brought six relatives of hostages together with Georgia state lawmakers, Shani Segal interrupted another speaker when she announced she needed to go out in the hall because Hamas had released a video showing her cousin, Rimon Kirsht, who is among the missing. Is she drinking?’” Segal argued that Americans should prioritize the plight of the Israeli hostages and pressed her family’s case to lawmakers in Georgia, even as Adva Adar did the same in Paris.