Freed Israeli hostages fear return to war risks lives of remaining Hamas captives: Impossible to grasp
Israeli hostages who were freed from Hamas fear the remaining captives’ lives are now at risk after the Jewish state ended the cease-fire with a series of airstrikes in Gaza Tuesday morning.Yarden Bibas, whose wife and two toddlers were killed while in captivity, warned that the airstrikes in Gaza could pose a threat to two of his best friends being held by Hamas — with the renewed fighting triggering his own painful memories under the terrorists’ custody.“Israel’s decision to return to fighting brings me back to Gaza, to the moments where I heard the sounds of explosions around me and where I feared for my life as I was afraid that the tunnel where I was being held would collapse,” he wrote in a statement.“My wife and children were kidnapped alive and were brutally murdered in captivity.
The military pressure endangers the hostages while an agreement brings them home,” he added.Eliya Cohen, who was forced to leave his brother, Alon Ohel, behind in Gaza after he was freed last month, said he can’t sit still knowing the fighting has resumed while his sibling remains trapped.
“It’s just impossible to grasp, and there are no words to describe the lack of understanding in our country about what is taking place 50 meters underground,” Cohen said.“And if there is any understanding, then how to explain this abandonment and lack of attention to human life?”Fellow freed captive Omer Wenkert also criticized the Israeli government, saying that the decision to return to war without a hostage deal undermines the advocacy he and the other survivors and families have done.“Have you listened to a word of what we freed hostages have been telling you? Do you not see us?” Wenkert wrote.
“This dangerous decision will have an untold effect on those of us who are still held there.And I say ‘on us’ because those who are there are me, and I am them.
“I’m still there!” he added.“Until the last hostage is released I am still there!”The H...