On October 7, 2023, after 06.30 in the morning, Hamas’s militiamen broke into the Kibutz Beeri, just over 4 kilometers from the Gaza Strip. Tammy Baruch remembers two years later how his son Edan (20 years) was killed that day, while his son Sahar (25 years) was kidnapped. Edan was one of the nearly 1,200 deaths in southern Israel and Sahar one of the 251 hostages taken by the Palestinian militias – of which 48 are still captive.
On October 7 in the afternoon, Israel began a very hard offensive punishment against Gaza, which has prolonged two years and has led to a genocide. More than 67,000 Palestinians have been killed since then and some 170,000 have been injured. According to the UN Independent International Commission, they are not only “the murders and serious bodily damage”, but Israel has perpetrated them “with the specific intention of destroying, totally or partially, the Palestinians in Gaza.”
That intention has been especially manifest since last March, when Israel broke the stop the fire with Hamas and resumed attacks against Gaza, at the same time imposing a total blockade about the Palestinian enclave that has caused the famine in the strip (460 people have died due to malnutrition in the past months).
Almost six months after the collapse of that truce and after several rounds of failed negotiations, last week the most solid possibility was opened until the time of a new cessation of hostilities in Gaza, based on a roadmap imposed by President Donald Trump. The negotiators of Israel and Hamas have attended the Egyptian town of Sharm el Sheij on Monday, where it is expected that together with the mediators – EGIPTO, Qatar and the United States – they reach an agreement for Israel to stop their offensive and Hamás leave the 48 hostages that follow in the strip.
Israel waits for living and dead hostages
In Israel, all hopes are put in Trump’s plan so that the last hostages that remain in the hands of the Palestinian militias are returned, both the 20 that the authorities believe that they are still alive and the corpses of the others. Among the deceased, is Sahar Baruch, as his mother tells some international media, including eldiario.es, at the Kibutz Beeri. The urbanization has remained frozen in time, with burned, destroyed and with the marks of the bullets or grenades used by the Palestinian militia. Residents have not yet returned, but the Kibutz organizes tours for the press and also for tourists.
“A few days after October 7 they told me that Edan had been killed, but I didn’t know what had happened to Sahar for a long time. He did not know if he had been murdered or taken hostage and both possibilities were horrible,” says Tammy Baruch inside the house where his children were that fateful tomorrow. Like all the houses in Israel, it has an antimiles and rocket shelter, of which the two young people were forced to leave when the house began to burn.
“After more than three weeks, they confirmed that Sahar had been kidnapped, but [las autoridades] They did not know if he was alive or dead. ”In December, they told the family that was alive, but a week later they were told that he had died, it is not known whether at the hands of his captors or by Israeli fire during a“ rescue operation. ”The Israeli army later said that it was not possible to determine the circumstances of his death, but confirmed that he had died during a rescue attempt.
There are hostages that are still alive in Gaza, the most important thing is to bring back the living because time ends
Tammy Baruch
— mother of a dead hostage
Now, for Baruch it is important to be able to recover the body of his son Sahar to make him funeral, along with Edic, and thus begin the grieving process that until now has not been possible and will only be possible when he burst it, he explains. However, he points out that the priority is the 20 hostages that the authorities believe they are still alive: “There are hostages that are still alive in Gaza, the most important thing is to bring back the living because time ends and we do not know if they will survive,” he warns. “After two years of torture, her life is in danger to every second that passes,” adds the woman who wears a shirt with the faces of the 48 kidnapped and the yellow bond in solidarity with the hostages that can be seen in many places in Israel.
“An agreement is imminent and we have to do everything possible to happen,” says Baruch without showing excessive optimism, his face reflects a lot of fatigue and few illusions. The relatives of the hostages are maintaining the pressure on Prime Minister Benjamín Netanyahu – including a camp at the doors of his residence in Jerusalem – to reach an agreement with Hamas that releases the hostages. According to the plan prepared by the US administration, they should be released 72 hours after the entry into force of a ceasefire. “For the first time in months, we hope that our nightmare finally ends,” said families in a statement.
For the first time in months, we hope that our nightmare will finally end
Families of Israeli hostages
At all times, the relatives of the hostages speak of ending the war, bringing the hostages and the soldiers back home, but do not refer to the suffering of the Palestinians or the terrible consequences that the civilian population of Gaza has paid – the majority of the dead are minors and women – for the attack perpetrated by Hamas on October 7.
Asked by eldiario.es, Baruch does not show penalty for the children and young people of Gaza who, like their two children, have lost their lives. “I think they must be educated to love human beings and life. My son was leftist and pacifist, and supported the Palestinians, but the Palestinians must be educated to respect human life,” he says.
A collective “delirium” that lasts two years
The historian, activist for Argentine human and political rights-Israelí Meir Margalit explains to Eldiario.es in an interview in Jerusalem that the desires of revenge are still alive and that society has not yet been able to begin the duel and will only do so when all the kidnapped returns.
According to Margalit, Israeli society has lived in a collective “delirium” for two years and, precisely, its new book that will be published next week in Spain is titled The delirium of Israeli society (Catarata, 2025). “There is a messianic, fanatic, fundamentalist, fascist minority who is marking the course and also the future of this country. Netyahu is dragged by this minority and drags the vast majority of this country behind,” he says. And that is possible because the population lives in “a state of fear and acute, chronic paranoia” in which only a “militaristic position” is possible.
On October 7, fear exploded and we entered a vicious circle of fear, terror and revenge
More multifaceted
— Argentine-Israeli historian
“Fear we have in DNA. Fear has to do with hundreds of years of pogroms, inquisitions and holocaust, we have been sucking it from our mothers. On October 7 it made it explode and we entered a vicious circle of fear, terror and revenge,” says the historian and researcher.
He considers that the Israelis cannot sympathize with the Gazatis because, in the first place, the media do not show what happens in Gaza. “Here you don’t see what you see in Europe, but, although people saw it, I doubt it would change their minds. Ideas are already preferred, then people would look for a justification, I would say that the media do not reflect reality, they would accuse the journalist of Anti -Semitic.”
People have suffered a very deep head washing, from the kind of childhood children know that the word ‘Arabic’ represents a threat
More multifaceted
— Argentine-Israeli historian
Margalit goes further and ensures that “people have suffered a very deep head washing, from the nursery children know that the word ‘Arabic’ represents a threat. And let’s not talk about the head washing in the army” (military service is mandatory for all Israelis, men and women). “After so many years of psychological pressure, the Israeli is unable to see an alternative solution” to the military.
The historian and politician is one of the few who dare to use the word genocide in Israel. Only last July, two outstanding Israeli human rights organizations finally said that what Israel was committing in Gaza was a genocide. “I use the word genocide, which has been very difficult for me to express it as a Jew and son of a holocaust survivor, but there is no choice but to call things by name, if with that we will understand the fury with which Israel is attacking Gaza,” admits Margalit.
Behind that fury, there are political reasons: “A year ago the war was aimed at ending Hamas and Hamas is already finished. Today the war has another objective, I would even say that it is another war and not the same. Today’s war aims to destroy the Palestinian authority and destroy once and for all the idea of two states for two nations.”
Today’s war aims to destroy the Palestinian authority and destroy once and for all the idea of two states for two nations
More multifaceted
— Argentine-Israeli historian
Netanyahu has repeatedly said that he will not allow the establishment of a Palestinian state, even after Trump included the idea in one of the 20 points of his plan for the future of Gaza. Margalit affirms that society cannot accept that idea either: “Fear has impregnated every point that people cannot conceive the possibility of a Palestinian state.”
The politician, who since the 70s has made the transition from the right to the left – “previously through the Zionist left and today in the non -Zionist left” – says that the problem in Israel is that there is no truly left -wing opposition, but that all political forces are rightist and nobody wants to end the occupation of the Palestinian territories. “This is Israel’s drama, there is no opposition that is sensible enough to say, to understand that the basic problem of this country is the occupation and that we have to end it. If not, we will continue in waves of intifated, surveys, wars, attacks to infinity,” he laments.
The Israeli opposition has been in favor of the US Plan and has urged Netanyahu to fulfill it, without letting its most radical governing partners boycott once again the possibility of a high fire. Even so, no one can prevent the Ultra Executive from deciding to resume war after obtaining the release of the 48 hostages -with his consequent political revenue in Israel. President Trump himself has made it clear that his priority is to get the release of the hostages and, if Hamas took a false step, “will completely support” Israel to “finish the work” – this is, the extermination in Gaza.
Source: www.eldiario.es
