“Romi comes home, Romi comes home”, Meirav Leshem Gonen told us a few months ago with resilient optimism in the face of deep and growing concern about the uncertain status of his daughter since she was kidnapped by Hamas in the attack on the Nova music festival. The last call recorded on her mobile phone before being violently taken to the Gaza Strip is dated October 7, 2023.
471 days later and thanks to another mobile phone, Meirav, Mendi Damari and Simona Steinbrecher They saw the images of their respective daughters together Romi, Emily (28) y Doron (31) in a car escorted by numerous armed hooded men, with the green bandanas typical of the Islamist group and harassed by a crowd of Gazans during the delivery to the Red Cross in northern Gaza. They were not easy images, but a few days ago they constituted a dream since they showed their daughters alive and getting out of the car with their own strength on the way home. Also Emily, who was shot during the 7-0 attack, was seriously injured and lost two fingers on her hand.
Their smiles, now at home, open an emotionally intense period in Israel before the planned release of almost a hundred live and dead hostages in the coming months. After the kidnapping of 251 people, the Israeli authorities assigned each family a contact person for all questions and doubts about the course of the negotiation, the videos of the hostages released by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the announcements from Gaza about “a dead hostage” or rumors about the discovery of bodies. Romi’s family contact called in the morning with the good and confirmed news. “I waited for this call 471 days! I waited for this message more than 11,000 hours! Romi is coming home!” her father Eitan reacted shortly before reuniting with his daughter, who celebrated her 24th anniversary in captivity in August.
The mother, one of the best-known activists in the campaign for the truce agreement, wrote in the group of whatsapp from the family committee: “We are very excited…hoping to see her soon.” Tremendous and mutual desire. As soon as he got out of the car at the army meeting point in Reim, Romi asked: “Where is my mother? Where is my mother?” Their hug, broadcast tonight in the media, is already part of the family and national photo album.
A wait that began not far from there at the Nova party in the Reim area. Instead of continuing dancing, Romi had to try to flee from the terrorists who attacked the immense open-air complex, murdering her great friend Gaya and almost 400 other people. “Mom, they shot me, I’m bleeding. Everyone in the car bleeding…. They shot at the car,” Romi said over the phone. “He told me he thought he was going to die. I told him no, no. His last word was ‘mom,'” she remembers.
That morning and practically at the same time, Doron and Emily were kidnapped in the “youth neighborhood” of Kibbutz Aza, one of the hardest hit in the south of the country. “They have caught me, they have caught me,” was the last recorded message from Doron hiding under the bed while shouts in Arabic “Allah Aqbar” can be heard in the background. Doron, today the most famous veterinary nurse in the country, was to have been released at the end of November 2023, but that day the truce that barely lasted a week was broken.
Emily, who has dual British nationality and grew up in Londonwas wounded in the hand and kidnapped with her own vehicle to Gaza. Liki, her friend and neighbor on the kibbutz, had mixed feelings. “In the attack on Kfar Aza, my father died in the fight to defend us and now I am sure that from heaven he would be happy seeing Emily,” he told Channel 12 yesterday, adding that he thought she had been murdered. Now you can hug her and maybe go together to a game of her favorite team, Tottenham.
The light of his tunnel in the Gaza Strip appeared this Sunday. And as they left, they began to realize that their faces and names are known in every Israeli home. They understood it in Netzarim when they met army doctors at the center set up in Reim and on the helicopter, piloted by the head of the Air Force, Tomer Bar, that took them to the Sheba Hospital in Tel Aviv.
The task of the Israeli health teams now is much more complex than the one they had at the end of November 2023 when the only truce agreement took place until this Sunday. So, there were 105 Israelis, including many children and women, but with a devastating difference: ranging from 50 to almost 500 days of captivity. Ella Elyakim, a 9-year-old girl who was released during that ceasefire, separating herself from some of the three, prepared a drawing for them: “Welcome home Doron, Romi and Emily.”