They exchanged text messages and emojis. Brief status updates with words of encouragement. A picture of the beloved family dog “Tutsi.”
Until no more messages came.
And then, Cindy Flash, an American, and her Israeli husband Igal vanished into the violence, presumed kidnapped by Hamas.
Four days after Hamas attacked Israel, more than 100 Israelis and potentially dozens of foreign nationals are thought to be held captive in the Gaza Strip. At least 14 U.S. citizens have been killed and an unknown number are still unaccounted for.
Flash, 67, originally from St. Paul, Minnesota, is one of them. She lives in Kfar Aza, a kibbutz in southern Israel near Gaza, where some of the most harrowing and grisly stories have been emerging during the last few days.
“They are breaking down the safe room door,” Flash said in one of her final messages to her daughter Keren, 34. “We need someone to come by the house right now.” She had been communicating with her parents from a few houses away.
Keren described her mother, who worked as an administrator in a local college, as someone who had the “sweetest biggest heart,” who everyone knew and loved, and who had spent a lifetime advocating for the rights of Palestinians, including those who live in Gaza where she may now be held.
I really don’t understand why people decided to live in these kibbutz right next to the Gaza border and never realize that this might happen.
It’s like sitting right on the very edge of the shoulder of a very busy highway. Eventually you will be hit by a fast moving car.
It’s disputed territory with the potential of becoming a war zone at any moment and people decided to buy expensive real estate and build beautiful homes next to impoverished people that have nothing.
And we should be surprised that this happened?
What the Palestinians did was terrible … but we should all be reading the headlines with a lot of history and context. None of it is justified by any side … but at the same time, none of it is a surprise.
I was under the impression that the border was extremely well guarded and secure. At least at some point it must have been. It seems like the government recently moved troops to the west bank in order to protect settlers instead. https://lemmy.world/post/6616736
It still begs the question.
Who would want to buy real estate and settle into a home right next to a militarized border that separates you from a country that has many individuals that want to murderously destroy you and your entire family? In an area that might at any time turn into a war zone?
I guess that applies to the whole of Israel, though. Gaza is the most dangerous hot spot right now. But I don’t know if that has always been the case. Hamas came to power in 2006. I guess people just carried on, hoping for the best and trusting in the security forces. But honestly all of that is speculation. My point was just, that the reasons for people living there are complicated.
Hamas ≢ Palestine
Yet Israel government=all Israelis is fine to you
The article clearly states “advocate for Palestinians, then Hamas came for her” like it’s some “voting for the face eating leopards” situation. It’s a valid distinction. Also, no, the Israeli army isn’t all Israelis.
It’s hard to see the difference between Palestinians and Hamas when they had a pro Palestine rally in my city and their signs were peppered with “death to all Jews” and pictures of Jewish caricatures being hanged.
You must be pretty stupid if you struggle to see the difference between hamas and normal palestinians
Do you think piss is apple juice, because theyre both a liquid and they could be the same color sometimes if you squint?
Please calm down if you can. Don’t let the miseducated get you emotional. They are victims of disinformation and propaganda, and it takes time to work through it. 👍
Palestinians knew who they were when they elected them.
20 years ago. Around half of today’s population didn’t vote and of the ones that did many didn’t vote for hamas. Find a new way to blame innocent people, this one doesn’t work.
Half of the population is below 19 years old. So they weren’t even born when Hamas was elected.
The average age of Palestinians is 19. The average age of Israelis is 30. That tells you one thing, that you don’t live a long life if your Palestinian.
Living in what human rights groups and the UN describe as an open air prison under bombarded from a neighboring country isn’t exactly the best thing for life expectancy.
Roughly 2.3 million people live on the Gaza Strip out of the roughly 5 million people living in Palestine BTW, which is the area currently being bombarded by Israel in response to the terrorist attack by Hamas.
I wouldn’t put a lot of stock in how the United Nations describes anything to do with Israel. Their bias is of the charts.
Remember, this is an organization that officially denounced Israel for human rights violations 20 times in one year, and for every other nation on Earth, with all the modern slavery, sex trafficking, genial mutilation, honor killings, murder of LGBTQ, marriage and rape of 7-yr-girls, denying basic education to women, forcing women to fully cover their bodies, mass incarcerations, etc,etc… For all the rest of the world, 6 denouncements.
So yeah, the UN is not a serious organization when it comes to Israel.
Maybe Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch is better.
Any organization that calls Israel “apartheid” is comically biased.
Israel is the only country in the region where a lesbian Muslim woman can vote, get an education and hold elected office.
Claiming it’s apartheid is like claiming the US was apartheid when occupying Iraq because we didn’t allow Iraqis to be citizens of the US.
Words have meanings, and the accusation is demonstrably absurd.
Israel knew who Netanyahu was when they elected him.
Sure. And Netanyahu is a right-wing asshole. But he isn’t a terrorist.
You see the difference?
I’m not here to argue semantics, Hamas are terrorists, Netanyahu is a terrorist.
If a terrorist is someone who attacks civilians for political aims, then yes.
That is pretty much textbook. Someone or some party that uses violence and the threat of violence to create fear in the pursuit of political goals.
Problem is that applies to most nation states that are active on the global scale. So the political use can be reduced to “terrorists are always the others”
