Families of Dead Hostages Vent Anger at Israeli Leaders Over War

[Pelican Press 0]

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Families of ***** Hostages Vent Anger at ******** Leaders Over War

The bodies returned for the final time to the villages that, in life, they had called home. Months of anguished waiting at an end, mourners embraced, wept, read tributes and lowered into the soil the ******** of ******** hostages recovered this week from the Gaza Strip.

But grief had to share space with fury at *******’s leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for not agreeing to a cease-***** with ****** that might have saved the captives’ lives.

“You were abandoned, again and again, by the prime minister and his ministers, to ******’s tunnels,” Keren Munder — herself a former ******** — said as she ******* her father, Abraham Munder, on Wednesday in his hometown, Nir Oz. Distant explosions and crackles of gunfire occasionally interrupted her eulogy, reminders of the war between ******* and ******, now in its 11th month.

******** forces this week recovered the bodies of six of the people taken ******** in the ******-led Oct. 7 ******** on *******: Mr. Munder, 79; Haim Peri, 80; Yoram Metzger, 80; and Alexander Dancyg, 75, all from Nir Oz; and Nadav Popplewell, 51; and Yagev Buchshtab, 35, both from a nearby community, Nirim.

It ******** unclear precisely when or how they *****. On Thursday, the ******** military said forensic pathologists had tentatively concluded that the bodies of all six hostages showed signs of gunfire, but did not say whether the shots were fatal. They were found next to four other bodies without any bullet wounds, who were presumed to be their captors, the military said.

“They were very much alive. They were not abducted *****. I was with them, I slept next to them,” said Danielle Aloni, a freed ******** who spent time with five of the men while captive in Gaza. “They could have been saved, and they should have been saved.”

****** led a massive surprise ******** on ******* on Oct. 7 that ******* roughly 1,200 people. About 250 people were taken ******** during the *******. More than 100 of those kidnapped were released during a weeklong truce in November — many of them women and children, including Ms. Munder, Ms. Aloni and Mr. Buchshtab’s wife, Rimon.

******* responded to the Oct. 7 ******* with a ferocious ******** campaign and invasion that has ******* tens of thousands of Palestinians, destroyed wide areas of the enclave and forced nearly all its residents to flee for their lives.

More than 100 of the captives remain in Gaza, including dozens who are presumed ***** by ******** authorities. There have been conflicting, unverified claims during the war that hostages were ******* in ******** bombardments or murdered by their guards.

Mr. Netanyahu has resisted intense and growing pressure from international allies, ******** security chiefs and many ordinary Israelis to strike a cease-***** deal that would include the release of the remaining hostages. He has stiffened his conditions for a truce in recent weeks, and accused ****** of doing the same.

Vowing “absolute victory” over ******, Mr. Netanyahu has called it the best way to free the captives. His critics call those goals contradictory.

“It is clear to all that the return of the hostages is only possible through a deal,” the Hostages Families Forum Headquarters, a support group, said in a statement on Thursday. “The recovery of the six bodies is no achievement; it is a testimony of the complete ******** to reach a deal in time.”

******** military rescue operations have freed just seven hostages so far, while ******** scores of Palestinians. The ******** military has said such operations cannot free all the captives, many of whom are believed to be scattered in ******’s extensive warren of tunnels.

On the winding road to Nir Oz on Wednesday, a handful of people in ****** T-shirts held up signs asking the Munder family for forgiveness that its patriarch was not rescued in time.

The Oct. 7 ******** devastated Nir Oz, a quiet, tightly knit kibbutz less than two miles from the Gaza border, where more than a quarter of the 400 residents were ******* or abducted.

The Munder family embodies that suffering. Mr. Munder ***** in captivity and his son, Roy, was ******* on Oct. 7. Three other family members were also kidnapped, and freed in November: Ruti, wife of the elder Mr. Munder; their daughter, Keren, and Keren’s son, Ohad, who was 9 years old.

Merav Mor Raviv, Abraham Munder’s niece, described him as a gentle, humble man devoted to his family. She said the family had been informed that he survived at least until the beginning of the March.

“They could have brought him back — there were enough possible deals on the table,” she said.

Addressing her father at his burial, Keren Munder accused the government of “sacrificing you and those like you. If only they had not searched for an illusory picture of victory.”

The funerals drew relatives, friends and neighbors, but also strangers who drove in from around the country to stand in solidarity with the survivors. With characteristic ******** informality, some mourners stood beside the graves in T-shirts, jeans and flip-flops.

Larry Butler, 74, lost dozens of friends and extended family members in the Oct. 7 ******* on Nir Oz. He said the kibbutz’s left-leaning residents felt profoundly abandoned by the right-wing government, for failing both to protect them and to bring home the hostages.

“It makes you wonder if there’s really a future in *******,” said Mr. Butler, gazing at graves that had joined the *********’s silent ranks since the *******.

All six of the hostages whose bodies were found on Monday were believed to have survived their ordeal for months, according to their families. The ******** authorities had announced by last month that five of them — all save Mr. Munder — were presumed *****.

Among the last people to see the five of them alive were Ms. Aloni and her 6-year-old daughter, Emilia, who were captured in Nir Oz and held by ****** for seven weeks. They were forcibly marched through the armed group’s tunnels, where they joined other captives from Nir Oz and Nirim, she said.

Mr. Metzger, who spoke Arabic, mediated with their captors. Mr. Dancyg, a Polish-born ******** historian, gave impromptu lectures on ******* history in an attempt to while away interminable days and nights underground, Ms. Aloni recalled.

Mr. Buchshtab was a kind, introverted man, a musician who also crafted his own instruments. His wife, Rimon, was held with him; the two were deeply devoted to one another, said Ms. Aloni.

“He was quiet, almost never spoke, and was deeply withdrawn into himself. He and his wife sought to just take care of each another,” said Ms. Aloni. “They were such a special couple.”

At times, the guards would kick him when he snored in his sleep, Ms. Aloni said.

They were held in suffocating conditions underground without sunlight and little fresh air, Ms. Aloni said. The other captives, including the elderly, were forced to twist themselves into painful positions on the thin mattresses allotted to them in the tunnels.

“But they were strong people, they didn’t cry. They weren’t afraid,” Ms. Aloni said. “They were scared, we were all terrified — but they also had this amazing resilience.”

But she wondered in horror at how they could have borne their captivity as the weeks became months with no end in sight.

“I don’t know how anyone could endure for so long in those conditions,” she said. “I was there for 50 days, and it was a terrible, endless eternity.”

Their guards moved Ms. Aloni and her daughter several times within the labyrinthine network of ******-built tunnels zigzagging under Gaza. Sometimes, some of the male captives were with her, but at other times they were marched off to separate locations, she said.

In early November, she and Emilia were whisked away to another holding area. She never saw any of the five men again.

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