Hamas' unprecedented attack on Israel 'was an act of terror on behalf of a terrorist organisation'

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00:00 Hello everyone, I'm Francois Pigalle.

00:02 Rocket sirens have gone off in the past hour in Israel's north.

00:06 This as the army warns citizens to shelter amid what it's calling an aerial infiltration.

00:11 The Palestinian Qassam Brigades Group claiming to have shelled the northern Israeli city

00:16 of Haifa with an R-160 rocket.

00:19 Israel, which is on day five of its war with Hamas, still securing its border with Gaza.

00:24 Gaza, where night has fallen on a territory of 2.2 million in the dark without running

00:30 water, what with Israel's blockade in full force.

00:33 On both sides, it's been a day of funerals and anguish.

00:36 Tuesday we reported on the horrible wait for the family of 12-year-old Eitan, a Franco-Israeli

00:44 kidnapped by armed gunmen on motorcycle Saturday.

00:47 He lives in the same near-Oz kibbutz as the family of Abiy On. Five of her relatives are

00:54 presumed to be hostages.

00:57 Abiy's 80-year-old cousin, Carmela Dan, Carmela's son-in-law, Ofer Calderon, he's 50.

01:03 Carmela's grandchildren, Sahar, 16, Noya, 13, Erez, 12.

01:12 Abiy On, thank you for taking the time to speak with us from Herzliya.

01:18 Thank you for having me.

01:20 First off, any latest news you have to tell us about your family?

01:24 Unfortunately, we don't have an update.

01:27 We are doing our best to work both with the Israeli, the American, and the French government,

01:33 as Carmela is a citizen of all three countries, and we're trying to do our best both from

01:38 the government and bureaucratic side, as we are from trying to spread the story in the

01:43 media.

01:46 With the other families from near-Oz, what have your days been like the last two, three

01:55 days as you try to, again, find that information you're seeking?

01:59 We are trying to do everything we can to make sure that we're reporting the information

02:04 in all three different countries, and then the family has put together a big community

02:11 of people that are trying to do as many interviews in as many countries to make sure that people

02:15 understand that what happened on Saturday is not part of this conflict that we know

02:20 as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

02:22 This was an act of terror on behalf of a terrorist organization, and we just want people to understand

02:28 that we want the hostages, more than 100 people, brought home now.

02:33 A lot of attention has been put on the attack on that music festival.

02:39 Now we're hearing the horror stories coming out of kibbutzes, like the one your relative

02:46 is from, a kibbutz where your family has been there for a century.

02:52 Yes.

02:53 Carmela's father was born in the United States, but he founded a kibbutz in the north, and

02:57 she moved to near-Oz in her early 20s when she married Uri.

03:01 Uri's family has been there for almost a century, and it's where their entire family lives.

03:05 She is the matriarch of a very, very big family with a lot of grandchildren, and this was

03:11 their home and their land and a place that they loved dearly.

03:20 Can you tell us more about Carmela and what you know of her abduction?

03:26 We have a family WhatsApp group, and after the first round of sirens on Saturday morning,

03:31 we were getting messages in the WhatsApp.

03:35 They were clearly in their bomb shelters.

03:36 They live much closer to where the rockets are coming from, so they need to stay there

03:40 in order to stay safe.

03:43 They were writing us that Hamas was in the kibbutz, that they had infiltrated across

03:48 the border, that they could hear gunfire, that Hamas was in their house.

03:53 They were afraid for their lives.

03:54 They were afraid that they wouldn't get out.

03:57 Afraid that they wouldn't get out, and then communications were cut.

04:02 We believe that the Israeli army recommended that they stop using their telephone so that

04:07 they wouldn't be a point of identification.

04:09 Many hours later, when the army did take control of the kibbutz, we learned that Hamas had

04:15 burned most of the physical structure of the kibbutz, that they had slaughtered many, many,

04:20 many of the residents, and that they had taken hostage a number of them.

04:25 We didn't have, and we don't have proof of the bodies of the five people we believe to

04:30 be kidnapped, but on Sunday we got video proof of Erez, who is 12 years old, in the hands

04:36 of Hamas.

04:38 Erez, in the Gaza Strip, presumably, which is in the dark tonight.

04:43 Your thoughts on that, Abion?

04:46 I believe that the military and governmental decisions at this point are beyond me.

04:51 All I want is for the people of France to think about what this would be like if it

04:55 was their grandparent or their child.

04:58 Noya is 13 and has special needs.

05:00 Carmela is 80 and she has a heart condition and no medicine.

05:04 We want innocent civilians returned, and for the resolution of this to be figured out afterwards.

05:11 This was the act of a terror organization, not the act of a state or a military.

05:18 Israel's farming communities like Neiraz, these kibbutz, they're one of the signature,

05:24 you could say, parts of the country's founding identity.

05:31 Is that spirit going to be broken by what happened Saturday?

05:36 I think that the spirit will be broken no matter what happened, is Pearl Harbor and

05:42 9/11 and the Holocaust all at the same time.

05:45 On the other side, Israel is a small and tight community, and the Jewish community worldwide

05:51 have come together to raise funds and get gear and feed soldiers and people in need.

06:00 And now we are calling on our allies, Jewish and non-Jewish, to raise their voices to ask

06:04 for the return of these hostages.

06:07 What's your message specifically to France?

06:10 Use your voice, Jewish or non-Jewish.

06:13 We have all been through horrific things in the past 100 years.

06:16 Every one of us knows it.

06:18 Someone in our family lived through it and remembers it.

06:21 Don't be the person that's silent right now.

06:23 Be the person that speaks on behalf of those that can't.

06:27 Abiyan, so many thanks for speaking with us live from Herzliya.

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