Mayan Zin hasn’t seen her two daughters since they were kidnapped on Oct. 7. Hamas terrorists entered Kibbutz Nahal Oz, killed her ex-husband and 17-year-old stepson Tomer, and took daughters Dafna, 16, and Ella, 8, back to the Gaza Strip.
“We know they used Tomer and made him go to the houses in Nahal Oz and tell people to open doors,” said Zin. “Then they would murder the people who opened the doors, in front of his eyes. I cannot and don’t want to imagine what they have seen or heard or were made to do before they got slaughtered.”
She blames the international community for not allowing Israel to take effective measures against Hamas.
“I demand that they start working to return our hostages held in Gaza, all of them, dead or alive, return all of them—soldiers, children, [the elderly], women, men,” said Zin. “It’s their fault that all these years they chained us down and didn’t let us defend ourselves and take care of Hamas when it was still a small problem, and now it’s up to them to return our loved ones to us,” she added.
“I am asking the world, the international community, to return our daughters,” she said.
“There are autistic children held in Gaza, there are elderly with serious health problems. Someone has to reach out to these people, who have done nothing wrong to anyone. My daughters have done nothing wrong. A mother who makes pancakes for her child on Saturday morning has done nothing to anyone. Those people don’t deserve this suffering, there’s no reason for that, no purpose at all,” said Zin.
Some 1,400 Israelis were killed in Hamas’s surprise attack on communities near the Gaza border. Thousands more were injured, and at least 220 Israelis and foreign nationals were taken captive.
