Families implore women’s groups to speak out over Israeli captives

Families of Israeli hostages held by Hamas inside Gaza have called on women’s groups, the UN and the International Red Cross to ‘take a stand now’ and do more for their loved ones.

A woman walks past portraits of Israeli hostages taken by Palestinian militants in the October 7 attack during a demonstration calling for their release in Tel Aviv on Monday. Picture: AFP

Families of Israeli hostages held by Hamas inside Gaza have called on women’s groups, the UN and the International Red Cross to “take a stand now” and do more for their loved ones, who are facing threats of sexual violence and torture.

The call comes as Hamas on Monday night released a video of Israeli soldier hostage Faul Azai Mark Asiani, 19, whom they claim was killed by an Israeli airstrike last Thursday.

International organisations from the UN to women’s networks have failed to acknowledge, respond to or initiate action on Israeli hostages.

More than 239 of them have spent 38 days inside Gaza since the October 7 kidnapping and murder spree by Hamas in southern Israel, with desperate family members traumatised with fears of what could be happening to them.

At the front of the Hostages and Missing Square in Tel Aviv, Rabbi Avidan Freedman from Efrat is undergoing a hunger strike until the International Red Cross visits and supplies medical aid to all Israelis kidnapped by Hamas.

He also wants the Israeli government to insist on humanitarian aid being provided for all hostages.

The International Red Cross has helped facilitate two hostage release situations, and has called for the release of the hostages as well as committing to visit the hostages, its president, Mirjana Spoljaric, told a Paris Peace forum.

Some critics, however, say the Red Cross should be demanding more access to hostages and oversee their medical status and provide supplies.

Israeli group Lifesaver Forum, which volunteers with an affiliate of the Red Cross, Magen David Adom, has written to Ms Spoljaric saying inaction by the Red Cross to inquire after the abductees or forcibly demand visits to them was “distressingly reminiscent of a darker timer when more than seven decades ago the Red Cross stood by during the Holocaust, failing to offer sufficient aid to the European Jews suffering unspeakable atrocities.”

They added: “Considering this history and the Red Cross’s own acknowledgment of past mistakes, we urge the International Committee of the Red Cross in the strongest possible terms to actively uphold the humanitarian principles it stands for.”

On Monday, Natalie Portman joined a chorus of women highly concerned about the hostages, particularly the nearly 100 women and young girls who face sexual violence and injuries as well as psychological distress about the trauma of their kidnapping.

Actor Natalie Portman

The Israeli-American actor in a video address said to family members of women and girls who are hostages: “I was so horrified at the experiences your family members had to go through and are still going through. I join you in calling the international community to end this … multinational humanitarian disaster, and protect the women and children, the elderly, all the people, innocent people, who are suffering right now. I am with you, I cry with you, I hold you in my thoughts and I join you in this cry to bring them back now.”

A medical report was made public at the Families Headquarters in Tel Aviv on Monday, including testimonies of horrific murders and violence against women on October 7, with mothers separated from young children and kidnapped to Gaza, and women dealing with complex medical conditions.

Reuma Tarshansky, mother of Gali Tarshansky, 13, who was kidnapped to Gaza, and 15-year-old Lior, who was murdered, said: “Gali is a sweet, brave and powerful girl. I have no idea what my daughter is going through right now. My girl has always been standing for what is true. I’m asking you women of the world to stand for her now. To stand for all of them – mothers, girls, elders.”

Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, professor of law at Bar-Ilan University, said women’s organisations had abandoned the hostages and “They must take a stand now’’.

Activists have called for women’s groups to stand with their Israeli sisters, given the brutal way they were targeted by the Hamas terrorists to be raped, spat on and degraded on October 7.