Israel-Hamas War: Hamas and Israel open to extension of truce

Avigail Idan, 4

Avigail’s parents, Roy Idan, 43, and Smadar Idan, 38, were killed in Kfar Aza during the October 7 attack. Her two siblings Michael, 9, and Amelia, 6, both survived.

Avigail, who is a dual Israeli and American citizen, was four years old while in captivity. Her name is also spelled ‘Abigail’ in the American media. President Biden has done that discussed Avigail in his public remarks and expressed special gratitude for her release as he spoke to reporters on Sunday before leaving for Washington from Nantucket, Massachusetts, where he was celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday.

Avigail’s aunt and uncle, Amit and Tal Idan, have taken care of her siblings since the attack.

On the morning of October 7, as terrorists overran the kibbutz, Smadar Idan was shot in front of her children, Tal Idan said Michael and Amelia told her. Roy Idan stood outside the house, holding Avigail in his arms. As Michael and Amelia ran to their father, they saw him shot while holding their sister. They assumed she was dead too and ran back to their house.

Covered in her father’s blood, Avigail ran to a neighbor, her aunt said. The man brought Avigail to his house to hide with his wife and children and then left the house to look for a gun. “Ten minutes later when he came back they were all gone,” Ms Idan said.

After hiding in a closet for 14 hours with their mother’s body on the other side of a fabric partition, Michael and Amelia were rescued by an Israeli soldier and taken to their uncle, Ms. Idan said.

“They’re not okay,” she said of Michael and Amelia. “They hear the wind blowing and they shake.”

Chen Goldstein Almog, 49; Agam Goldstein Almog, 17; Gal Goldstein Almog, 11; Tal Goldstein Almog, 9

Chen Goldstein Almog was abducted from Kibbutz Kfar Aza along with three of her children, Agam, Gal and Tal. Her husband, Nadav Goldstein Almog, 48, and their eldest daughter, Yam, 20, were killed in the October 7 terrorist attack. Nadav and Yam, who were soldiers in the Israeli army, were buried on October 23, Chen’s birthday.

“They are fine, in good condition and smiling,” Inbar Goldstein, Agam, Gal and Tal’s aunt, said in a statement released late Sunday. “We will continue the fight until the last hostages return to us safe and sound.”

Mr. Goldstein Almog, an executive at Kafrit Industries, a plastics manufacturer founded in Kfar Aza, was an Ironman athlete and was injured in a cycling accident several months before the attacks. That’s why he was using crutches at the time of the attacks. He grew up in Kfar Aza.

Five members of the extended Almog family were killed in a terrorist attack in the Israeli city of Haifa twenty years earlier, in October 2003.

At a recent meeting in Tel Aviv of Kfar Aza survivors to press for the release of their hostages, David Goldstein, 73, Nadav’s father, who was in Bulgaria with other elderly members of the kibbutz on October 7, said: “What they have taken away from us will not come back. What can be returned must be returned.”

Hagar Brodutch, 40; Ofri Brodutch, 10; Yuval Brodutch, 8; Uriah Brodutch, 4

Hagar Brodutch and her three children were abducted from their home in Kfar Aza while her husband and the children’s father, Avichai Brodutch, were defending the community, he said.

Mr. Brodutch, 42, a farmer and nursing student who survived the attack, said in a recent interview that the family moved to Kfar Aza about nine years ago. Mrs. Brodutch worked as a community manager and business manager.

Their daughter, Ofri, loves British rock music and, Mr Brodutch said, had just received a guitar for her birthday shortly before she was kidnapped. Yuval likes barbecues and football and Minecraft on his X-box, while Uriah, who often plays football with his brother, is a fan of the French football club Paris Saint-Germain.

A week after the attack, Mr. Brodutch began a solo vigil outside military and government headquarters in Tel Aviv to raise public awareness about his plight and that of the other families of the missing. He said he felt at the time that the country was more focused on revenge against Hamas than on freeing the hostages. Mr. Brodutch showed up for his protest with the family dog ​​and a homemade sign that read, “My family is in Gaza.” He was soon joined by many supporters.

“I think it changed things,” he said.

Dafna Elyakim, 15; Ella Elyakim, 8

Daphna and Ella were at home with their father, Noam Elyakim; his partner, Dikla Arava; and her son Tomer at Kibbutz Nahal Oz during the October 7 attack.

In the early hours of the attack, photos surfaced on the messaging platform Telegram of the two girls sitting on mattresses in a location unknown to their families. A video also emerged: Hamas had live-streamed its attackers interrogating Mr. Elyakim, who was bleeding from the leg, and Ms. Arava, using Ms. Arava’s Facebook page to do so. Dafna, Ella and Tomer sat with the couple as terrorists interrogated them in the family’s home.

Mr Elyakim, Ms Arava and Tomer were killed in the attack, and Dafna and Ella were taken hostage.

The girls’ mother, Maayan Zin, said on Sunday: “After a long period of living in terrible uncertainty, my daughters are finally with me. These were 51 days in which I lived between despair and hope, between pain and optimism.”

“The girls are returning to a new and complex situation, and now we have a period of recovery that will take time,” their mother added.

In a job interview last monthMs. Zin called on the Israeli government to “do everything, of course: a prisoner exchange agreement, an operation, a backflip in the air” to bring her daughters back. On Sunday she said: “My heart will only be whole again when everyone returns home safely.”

Aviva Siegel, 62

Aviva Siegel, also known as Adrienne Siegel, was taken from her home in Kfar Aza, where she was sheltering with her husband, Keith Siegel, 64. She was born in South Africa and emigrated to Israel with her family as a child.

A kindergarten teacher, Ms. Siegel and Mr. Siegel, both Israeli-American citizens who work for a pharmaceutical company, have lived in Kfar Aza for about 40 years. Their children, who were outside the kibbutz, lost contact with them around 10 a.m. on October 7. According to Israeli news media, a Hamas video appeared on Telegram the next day showing the couple being driven into Gaza in their own car.

Mr. Siegel is believed to still be in Gaza.

Elma Avraham, 84

Elma Avraham was taken hostage from her home in Kibbutz Nahal Oz, near the Gaza border. Her home is said to be filled with sculptures, paintings and ceramics that she created.

Dr. Hagai Levine, a public health physician who heads the medical team at the Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum, told reporters this month that Ms. Avraham urgently needed several heart medications “just to survive.”

After her release, Ms. Avraham was flown by army helicopter directly from Gaza to the nearest Israeli hospital, the Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba. She was in serious condition, according to the Israeli army.

Roni Krivoi, 25

Roni Krivoi, a Russian-Israeli, was kidnapped from the Tribe of Nova music festival that took place near the Gaza border. Mr. Krivoi worked at the open-air rave as a member of the sound crew.

A resident of Karmiel, a city in northern Israel, he worked in construction while trying to build a career in the world of music and sound.

Mr. Krivoi is the first adult male hostage with Israeli citizenship to be released. The Russian government and Hamas said his release came as a result of direct contacts between them and not as part of the broader prisoner exchange agreement.

More than 350 rave attendees and staff were killed during the Hamas-led terrorist attacks on October 7, when gunmen surrounded the site and ambushed partygoers as they ran through fields, hid among bushes, took refuge in roadside shelters or tried to flee by car.

Gaya Gupta reporting contributed.