Israel war: Aussie’s family members killed and abducted by terrorists
An Australian’s two grandsons and daughter-in-law were abducted and his son’s girlfriend was killed by Hamas.
The two young grandsons and daughter-in-law of an Australian have been abducted and his son’s girlfriend brutally killed after their village was raided by Hamas terrorists.
Adi Kaplon is believed to be among hundreds captured by insurgents who crossed the Gaza border into villages and towns in southern Israel early on Sunday, according to The Australian.
Ms Kaplon’s childhood friend Moses Ben-Giat spoke to The Australian as he revealed the harrowing moment terrorists entered his friend’s home, kidnapping her and using her infant son as a “human shield.”
Speaking on behalf of Ms Kaplon’s distraught Australian father-in-law, Yonadav, Mr Ben-Giat said Yonadav’s two sons live with their families in the village of Kibbutz Holit, just two kilometres from the Gaza border.
Both of Yonadav’s sons were out in a neighbouring Kibbutz, pinned down by gunfire when Hamas terrorists commenced a surprise attack on Holit.
Mr Ben-Giat said they stormed Yonadav’s youngest son’s home first, killing his girlfriend as she slept.
“Her body is still there, on the bed, we can’t reach that yet,” he said.
“The men continued on, going from ‘house to house’ forcibly removing defenceless families from their homes, killing those that resisted.
“They took entire families in their house, anyone who opposed them, by any means … they would kill. They weren’t struck by a bomb, they were killed one by one.”
Ms Kaplon had barricaded herself along with her four-month-old and four-year-old sons in a shelter within the house, as she messaged her neighbour Avital Aladjem while hiding from the insurgents.
“Adi tried to hang on as much as she could,” Mr Ben-Giat said.
Mr Ben-Giat said terrorists threw a grenade into the living room of Ms Kaplon’s house, blowing open the front door. Insurgents then entered the house following the explosion and dragged Adi and her boys from their home.
Hamas fighters then separated children from their mother and marched them, along with Ms Aladjem, through the kibbutz, using the children as “human shields” to protect themselves.
Mr Ben-Giat said the last he had heard from Ms Kaplon was via text at around midday on Saturday and believes she was taken by the terrorists shortly after.
“When night came, they put them on a truck and the young boy couldn’t stop screaming, he had a bullet in his leg,” Mr Ben-Giat said.
“He couldn’t stop screaming ‘let me go, let me go.’”
“We believe that the fact that he screamed and the fact that the four and a half month-old baby also screamed led the terrorists to decide that they have no interest in taking care of those kids.”
Meanwhile, thousands of Australians who have been caught up in the Israeli conflict are holed up in hotels or homes as they await advice on what to do next, three days after Hamas terrorists launched a murderous invasion.
A Sydney-based travel company is currently working out how to evacuate at least four groups of holiday-makers, who are on one of their pilgrimages to the Holy Land.
Harvest Journeys would not confirm how many Australians were currently on their tours.
“We are working on evacuation plans for those groups in Jerusalem and the Sea of Galilee and potential alternative travel plans for those in Jordan who were scheduled to enter Israel in the coming days,” they said in a statement.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said there were 11,035 Israeli-born people living in Australia, mostly in Victoria and NSW, and about 10 to12,000 Australians living in Israel.
DFAT’s Smart Traveller advice to Australians currently in Israel was not to travel to areas near the border with Gaza due to ongoing armed conflict and to follow the advice of local authorities.
Here are some of the Australians stranded in the midst of the horror conflict.
SOLLY VANUNU, 14, LOSES FRIEND
Less than a week ago Solly Vanunu was hanging out at the local mall in Tel Aviv with his childhood friend Saghi.
On Monday, Solly was praying for his friend after he and his parents were murdered by Hamas militants.
“I only saw Saghi the other day, we hung out at the mall in Tel Aviv,” Solly, a 14-year-old Israeli-Australian living with his family in Tel Aviv, said.
“It’s hard to concentrate on your maths homework when you know he was murdered in cold blood.”
Saghi and his entire family were killed in a bloodbath by Hamas terrorists who burst into his family home in the border town of Sderot and indiscriminately opened fire.
“The strangest thing is, we were joking ‘what would you do if you only had one month to live?’,” Solly said, choking back tears.
“That was three weeks ago, I pray he got shot before his parents so he didn’t have to watch them die.”
Solly and his family, who moved from Coogee in Sydney’s east to Tel Aviv 18 years ago, said they were now bracing for more attacks.
“It hasn’t even started yet. We’re just waiting, waiting for it all to start,” he said.
“It’s not the air-raid sirens that scare, in Israel we have weeks of sirens at least twice a year, and there’s a thing that neutralises the bomb, it’s called the Iron Dome – it’s the terrorists, they kill and kill and kill, – they are savages, they have no limit .
“They’re not human, they don’t have any sense of humanity, they kill and sabotage whatever they want without feeling a thing. I don’t know how they sleep at night, it scares me.”
“When the terrorists can’t get into your house, they burn it down.”
GOLD COAST SCHOOL KIDS TRAPPED IN ISRAEL
Two Gold Coast teenagers had arrived in Israel days prior to the unprecedented violent attacks, with their shocked mother back home saying it’s like “missiles seem to chase them”.
Somerset College students Noa Chester-Haviv, 16 and her 13-year-old sister Tamar landed in Tel Aviv a week ago to visit family before travelling to northern Israel to stay with grandparents.
The teenagers were to be joined next month by their mother Maya Chester before Israel declared a state of war after hundreds were killed by Hamas fighters in shock attacks on Saturday.
Ms Chester and her daughters left Israel when the girls were four and one to escape the ongoing conflict in the region.
The Mudgeeraba resident said she could not describe her state of fear following Saturday’s surprise attack and the resulting uncertainty throughout the region.
“It’s now happening to them - my worst nightmare,” Ms Chester said.
On Sunday, she told the Bulletin: “We’re trying to get them out and we can’t.
“I can’t find flights, there’s nothing available in the next few days – they’ve cancelled all flights by non-Israeli airlines.”
AUSSIES HOLED UP IN ISRAELI HOTELS, HOMES
Alan and Marilyn Jankelowitz, who are visiting family in Rehovot, just 40km from Gaza, described being woken at 6am on Saturday to the sound of sirens and bombs dropping all around them.
“It was bedlam,” Mr Jankelowitz of Sydney said.
“We did not know where to go or what to do. We couldn’t get hold of my brother or sister-in-law,” the 69-year-old said.
“They eventually came and took us to the air raid shelter.”
The couple, who are grandparents, have been in and out of the air raid shelter since the first attack on Saturday, with the last sirens, being a false alarm in the early hours of Monday, local time.
One rocket landed just 300m from their apartment, leaving a giant crater and shrapnel damage to the building.
The air raid shelters, which fit around 60 people include mums and babies, as well as holocaust survivors.
“It’s very difficult and very scary and traumatic and one feels incredibly vulnerable,” Mr Jankelowitz, who has managed to book a flight home for himself and his wife for this Thursday, said.
Brisbane-born Gabrielle Briner, 30, a freelance journalist who has lived in Israel for the past eight years, described how her fellow Israelis were in “complete shock and confusion” following the attack by Hamas on Saturday.
“I’ve never in my life felt like this,” Ms Briner said.
“It’s in the middle of the night, but I would say most people are awake. There’s hundreds of families with loved ones still missing, kidnapped,” she said.
“The streets are absolutely deserted. People are so scared, still in complete shock and confusion.
“It’s heartbreaking. There are so many dead. Seven hundred people died in one day, the biggest Israeli death toll in a single day since the holocaust.”
She said where she lived in Tel Aviv people were staying at home and many businesses were closed.
“Schools have been cancelled, people have been advised to stay at home, near safe rooms. Many buildings and apartments here have them,” Ms Briner said.
“Restaurants are closed. I went to the supermarket to buy a few things. Many fruits and vegetables are out. I heard one mum say to her daughter they needed tinned food in case the electricity goes out.
“That tells you a lot about how people are feeling.”
She said in the past 48 hours many of her friends had been called up to the military reserves, which was a terrifying thought after seeing what the terrorist had done to innocent civilians, the elderly and children.
She said the future was frightening.
“We are at war. We are not in an operation, or a flare up,” Ms Briner said.
“There are still Hamas terrorists active in Israeli territory, in six southern Israeli towns. Our first priority is to secure Israel.
“This is war. We don’t know what will happen tomorrow.
“We don’t know whether this war will last a few days, weeks or possibly months.”
SA FAMILIES CAUGHT UP IN HORROR
An Adelaide mum has described the harrowing moment her family narrowly escaped being victims of Hamas’ horrifying attack on Israel.
Adi Alpron and her SA family moved to Israel just months ago and spoke of the fear they are now living through, with the war forcing them to flee their home away from relatives, who are among the thousands under attack.
“My little boy was born in Adelaide and they have never been exposed to anything like this, the sirens,” she told 9News Adelaide.
“They are OK, they want to go back home, home to Adelaide. Right now the family are safe, having fled to a friend’s place in the north, but other relatives are still in hiding.”
“They have terrorists in their house, smashing the house, and they spent eight hours in a shelter while the terrorists were outside,” she said.
Another Adelaide mum, Sigalit Levin, said she was grieving the loss of her cousin, a father of two, who was shot dead in the street.
“He went outside to them and unfortunately the terrorists were dressed up in Israeli army uniforms and he was murdered there and then,” she said.
MELBOURNE-ISRAELI WOMAN KEREN LEWINSOHN
More than 100 terrorists had flooded their tiny kibbutz (community) on the border of Gaza and Israel, shooting their parents and baby sister dead as they went door to door dragging people from their homes, slaughtering families and kidnapping civilians, young and old.
Keren Lewinsohn, of Caulfield South, said her parents – who are also from Melbourne and were also in the kibbutz – “miraculously” survived the onslaught.
Her mum and dad, who were eventually rescued by Israeli soldiers, told her the boys – both under seven years old – hid for hours as they waited to be saved.
“Their grandma was on holiday, so they called her overseas from the cupboard, but she couldn’t organise any help for the kids because there were terrorists everywhere,” she told the Herald Sun.
“They were in the house on their own for eight hours.”
Ms Lewinsohn’s parents, meanwhile, hid in a safe room, reading the desperate pleas from neighbours for help which flooded the kibbutz community group chat.
She said: “People were saying, they’re in our house, please come and help us now. They’re killing us, they’re taking our kids.”
Fellow Melburnian Orit Elkayam-Cohen, of Caulfield South, told how several friends were killed trying to protect their community.
“I have friends in … I had friends in a moshav (Israeli town) that was heavily attacked by the terrorists and some of my friends died protecting the moshav,” she said.
“There are so many people I know now that are missing.”
Ms Elkayam-Cohen said her parents, in their 80s and living 10 minutes from Gaza, had not left their safe room for more than 30 hours.
MELBOURNE EXPAT EMILY GIAN
Emily Gian, an Australian expat living with her family in Yehud, about 20km outside Tel Aviv, has taken to social media while sheltering with her husband and three children in a bunker.
“My heart is breaking, trying to follow the news, reading story after story of family members searching for loved ones they have lost contact with throughout the day,” Emily Gian wrote.
“In the meantime, this is where you will find us every time a red alert siren goes off.”
The Melbourne woman, whose LinkedIn profile lists her as an Israel-based part-time director of social media at the Zionist Federation of Australia, said her family had hope the Israeli army would prevail.
“My 4.5 year old just told us ‘Our army is too strong. No one can break them because they can get anyone. Except for people on our team.’ Yep you are right, little man. We’ve got this,” she wrote on X.
But within minutes they were back in the back in the bunker.
“Was just sitting outside with my husband, trying to catch my breathe (sic) after an intense day inside with the kids,” she wrote.
“Asked him which direction hypothetically a rocket would come from. As he was pointing, the red alert sirens went off. Down to the shelter. Followed by many booms.
“It feels like this is the start of a very long night. And in the meantime, I cannot get the images out of my head of all of those horrific videos circulating of old ladies being paraded through Gaza, or that young Israeli woman being dragged in the back of the Jeep.”
MELBOURNE COUPLE GEORGE MACK AND WIFE MARTHA
Meanwhile, Melbourne man George Mack and his wife, Martha, are hoping they will be on a flight home on Monday night, less than a week after they arrived in Israel to visit family they have not seen in 42 years.
The couple, from Wantirna, have been staying 30km from Gaza in a town called Ashdod and been caught “right in the middle” of the Hamas attack, Mr Mack said.
Waking up on Sunday morning, which is considered a normal work day in Israel, Mr Mack said the sounds of explosions have reduced.
“There are no rockets overhead this morning,” Mr Mack said. “The Israeli air force jets can be heard flying overhead. There are a few cars on the streets, but only a fraction of normal. Everyone is remaining indoors and generally no one is going to work.”
Around half of flights due to leave Tel Aviv airport have been cancelled.
Mr Mack and his wife Martha’s return flight to Melbourne was cancelled but they have rebooked to leave for Melbourne on Monday night.
“We wait in hope that Monday’s flight departs,” he said.
HUMAN RIGHTS LAWYER ARSEN OSTROVSKY
Human rights lawyer Arsen Ostrovsky — who was born in Bondi in Sydney — fled with his wife and two young children, aged two and six, to their apartment bunker in Tel Aviv as the building shook from rocket attacks.
“Imagine having to run into your kids‘ room when you hear the siren,” he told A Current Affair.
“I grabbed one of our daughters literally from her crib and my wife grabbed the other daughter and we ran into the shelter.
“My six-year-old daughter looks at me and says, ‘Daddy why are they doing this? Why do they not like us?’ And I have to explain that, I have to look her in the eye and explain that. No father should have to do that.”
AUSSIE ACTOR CAUGHT UP IN CHAOS
Hugh Sheridan was staying in a hotel in Israel with friends when the bombing started.
He told of his shock in a series of Instagram posts, while taking shelter in the hotel stairwell.
“A few hours ago everyone was living life completely normal in Israel,” he wrote.
“It was a big Jewish holiday yesterday, one week after new year. I met a family who had 150 fly in for their wedding tomorrow. We were at a bbq (sic) yesterday with young people who at this very minute are on their way to Gaza to fight.
“A few hours later, this country is at war. Their lives have completely changed in an instant. It’s unbelievable how quickly and brutal the attack has been. With no warning. My heart breaks. I’m in the stairwell so safe for now. X love you all.”
Hours later, Sheridan and his friends were on a flight out of Tel Aviv, bound for Athens.
Australians in need of emergency consular assistance should contact the Australian Government’s 24-hour Consular Emergency Centre on 1300 555 135 (Australia) or +61 2 6261 3305 (if overseas).
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