The testimonies of Israelis who were abducted by the Hamas terrorist organization and released continue to occupy the media around the world. In an article she wrote for The New York Times, Ruthie Munder recounts her experiences of captivity and her personal loss.
Over the next 49 days, I spent most of my time locked in a small room on the second floor of a hospital. My captor, named Muhammad, called himself a Hamas soldier, but didn't look like a soldier. I was guarded against my will by a plainclothes guard in a civilian facility."
The forced stay at the hospital in Khan Yunis was not her first visit to the Gaza city. "My first time in Gaza was in 1967. Until the war that year, Gaza was a place we were worried about, but we didn't know much about the Gazans themselves. The area, then under Egyptian control, was just over the horizon and posed a threat of infiltrations by Fedayeen and invasion by Arab armies. He cast a shadow over Nir Oz and the other kibbutzim around us, in the area known as the Gaza envelope," Munder wrote.
Monder recounts her first visit to the neighboring Gaza Strip in the 1960s, writing: "I found myself on the back of a tractor with some of my kibbutz friends, crossing the invisible border on our way to the beautiful beaches of Khan Yunis. On our way back, we passed through Rafah to collect pita bread on the way home.
"I have happy memories of that day, and in the intervening years my ties with the Gazans have grown. I knew Gazan businessmen who traded with my brother-in-law in Beersheba and stayed at my home in Nir Oz. I sat next to them in traffic jams on my weekend trips to Tel Aviv. For a while, you could imagine that we were meant to live together."
Munder, who, like many of the kibbutzim in the envelope, developed personal relationships with Gazans, closed the circle of visits to Gaza during and after the abduction. "On October 7, masked Hamas gunmen broke into a shelter inside my house and kidnapped me; my daughter, Karen; And my grandson, Ohad. My husband, Avraham, was deposed in an attempt to prevent the shouting men from entering the safe room and taken separately from us. He is still in captivity, his condition is unknown. Hamas also killed Benny Roy when he tried to defend Nir Oz. Later that day, I returned to Khan Yunis, 56 years after the trip to the beach.
"Over the next 49 days, I spent most of my time locked in a small room on the second floor of a hospital. My captor, who answered the name Muhammad, called himself a Hamas soldier, but didn't look like a soldier. I was guarded against my will by a plainclothes guard in a civilian facility."
Despite the difficult things she experienced, Munder expresses hope for better days and writes: I wish for a world where Mohammed could build his own business, live with dignity and talk regularly with his Israeli neighbors and with mutual respect. In this world, I don't believe he would have joined a terrorist organization that sent him to look after a kidnapped grandmother who didn't intend to harm him."
Abducted Avraham Munder, Photo: None
"After fifty days as a kidnapper, I left Khan Yunis in a Red Cross car, liberated with my daughter and grandson. My eyes were covered along the way in, but now I could see the city that because of the war, a shadow of the place you remembered from the day I spent on the beach. The kibbutz I returned to also became a mound of ruins after the October 70 attack. Everything we built together for over <> years has been destroyed. I don't pretend to know what will happen in the coming years. I don't know if the Gazans will choose to concentrate their efforts on rebuilding Khan Yunis rather than burning Nir Oz. I don't know if young families will return to my kibbutz and pick fruit from the trees. All I'm focused on is bringing my husband home.
"What I do know is that I will not go to Gaza a third time. Maybe one day Israelis will go to the beach in Gaza again or host Gaza merchants over coffee at home. I hope that our two peoples can finally live in peace, side by side. And I know that if Hamas stays in power, it will never happen," Munder wrote.
Wrong? We'll fix it! If you find a mistake in the article, please share with us