The Marmán family fled Argentina in 1981. As Jews, they chose Israel to get away from the kidnappings, torture and disappearances of the generals' dictatorship. Since then, Clara Marmán, a 63-year-old teacher, has lived in the Nir-Yitzhak kibbutz, on the Israeli border with Gaza. On October 7, she was kidnapped by Hamas in the operation raid that has unleashed terror in the region and that supports Israel's brutal retaliation against the Gazan population. “The important thing is that the kidnapped people return and then peace has to prevail.”
Clara defines herself as a pacifist. “The kibbutz is less than four kilometers away from the border, and for the last twenty years I have been used to missiles and alerts.” All the houses of the kibbutz have a panic room, which they call a safe room, as if they lived in a hurricane zone.
“It was my two-year-old granddaughter's birthday and I invited my entire family, which is spread across Israel. The kibbutz is somewhat rural, it is pleasant and I like, as a hostess, receiving visitors.” Together with his partner, Luis, 70, invited his brother Fernando and his sister Gabriela to spend the weekend. “At 6:30 a.m. I heard the alarm and woke everyone up. “You had to go into the safe room.”
Clara Marmán is used to these alarms. Normally they stay inside for a few minutes, listen to the missiles and come out to continue with their routines. “I turned on the television and saw that the alert was throughout the country, a terrible attack.” On Israeli television we began to see cities where there were trucks with terrorists and shootings. Marmán is a hostess who finds solace in serving her guests. “As Argentines we like mate, so I brought them mate and cake, but I began to see that the running of the bulls was getting much longer.” Then, concern increased and they began to receive messages from worried relatives and neighbors or acquaintances asking them not to leave the room. Clara explains that it was not the first time that Palestinians infiltrated the area, but usually these incursions are purely material, people looking for work. During the years that this Argentine family has lived next to the border with Gaza “there has been coexistence with the Palestinians”, many of them, in fact, work in the kibbutz fields, although Clara admits that the coexistence and permeability of the border in both directions have been hardening and shrinking. “We are pacifists and believe in mutual coexistence,” so Marmán still did not consider a terrorist incursion. “I have been in my home for more than 40 years and I feel safe. There is also the army on the border taking care of us and the kibbutz guard. “I never thought something like this could happen.”
“Around 11:00 a.m., we started to hear noises here, inside the house.” They had been locked up for five hours when things became more sinister, they heard windows bursting, shots being fired at furniture and the house being destroyed. “That was the last thing we could say in the messages we sent to family and friends.”
The kibbutz's safe rooms are designed for missile attacks, the most common threat in the area, so they are reinforced with concrete but the doors are not particularly robust, because they must be able to be opened by rescue teams if there is an attack. The Marmáns tried to block the door with metal rods and a chair, but it didn't take much for the Hamas terrorists to break it open.
“We instinctively positioned ourselves in an opposite corner of the safe room.” That saved their lives, because when they forced the door a burst of gunshots entered the room. “We said, ‘Don’t throw, don’t throw!’ We were terrified.” The hostess tried to reassure her family: “Well, don't worry, we're going to do what they say.” The Marmáns were lucky, Clara explains, to be transferred to their captivity all together. When, in the November negotiations, Hamas decided to free women and girls, Clara, her niece, and her granddaughter did not want to leave: “We will all leave together.” Fernando and Luis, his partner and his brother, forced them.
Clara only thinks about their liberation, and although her house has been destroyed and the brutal violence unleashed by Israel against the Gazans has changed the scale of the conflict, she still believes in coexistence. “When I arrived from Argentina to Israel, in 1981, I went to the beaches of Rafia”, modern Rafah. “Then there was still good coexistence between Palestinians and Jews, but over the years absolutely everything was ruined.” However, she still advocates for a truce today. “You have to find a way. "I am a pacifist, I believe in humanity, beyond religions or races, and even after 53 days of kidnapping, I still think that a truce can be negotiated."
With the rest of those released, they work for dialogue: “There are open channels. We ask that the Government listen to us and understand that human life is the most important thing.”
