My mother is my mother", says, between sobs, Natalia Madmon, Argentinian and teacher like her. An obvious fact that says it all. The 77-year-old mother was alone at home on October 7 when terrorists captured her and took her, along with eighty other people, from the Nir Oz kibbutz, the same one where the two octogenarian Israelis who were freed before 'yesterday night.
Hamas has 22 Latin American hostages in Gaza, including Ofelia Roitman, who was woken up by gunshots at half past seven in the morning on October 7. She was alone at home: her husband had fractured his hip a week earlier on a tourist trip to Poland and remains hospitalized.
Mrs. Roitman made herself a coffee, still calm, turned on the television to listen to the news and called her daughter, with whom she spoke every ten minutes, already inside the shelter of each single-family home. "He tried to reassure us". In less than two hours, at 9:37 a.m., last communication, the tranquility had turned into fear, almost panic.
Late at night, a neighbor dared to enter the house and informed them that he was not there. The house looked violated, as if thieves had entered it.
Since then, Natalia – who has two brothers – has led an impossible life: she doesn't sleep, barely eats, cries a lot and always thinks if her mother will be able to do what she does. "Time does not pass. It's getting up one more day, thinking about things, watching TV, waiting for things to happen, wondering if he sleeps, if he eats, if he can go to the toilet, if he's wearing slippers, if he's cold, if he's not cold, if he they give food I'm sure he's going through a lot of fear. It's already been eighteen days without my mother and I'm sure the time goes by faster than it does for her."
The parents arrived from Argentina in 1985, resentful of some episodes of anti-Semitism in the country and convinced of the communal life of the kibbutzim in southern Israel and that the neighbors, the Palestinians, were human beings like them. Coexistence seemed possible to them and thus they defended it all their lives, actively. They never wanted to live in another place in Israel further away from the Gaza Strip.
Argentine President Alberto Fernandez reached out from China last week to find out the details, offer them his phone number and promise that they will do everything in their power to secure their release .But there are so many, the hostages! And great despair. Through a cousin, a sports announcer, they have transferred the case to Lionel Messi and those things that are requested in these cases: if you could intercede for the mother...
After all, Leo Messi was crowned in 2022 in Qatar, the most influential country in terms of mediation with Hamas (among other details, they pay the monthly salaries of 80% of the officials of the Gaza Strip, which is not exactly the land of entrepreneurs in the private sector).
"My mother is not what she thinks now, but my father has lost faith in people. It hurt him so much... It was done by the people he thought he could talk to. And what he had believed in all his life was shattered, poof, in one day. He had written verses, he had made exhibitions with paintings for peace".
- How do you feel when, on two different nights, they report that they have released two kidnapped women and none of them is your mother?
- First, I am very happy because they are families I know, they were neighbors, and I have treated their children. I was able to talk to them even though they didn't match my mother, they didn't see my mother. I wanted to know how they had been treated and I want to think that the mother is being treated like them. I want to think about it...
Time moves on. The United States has asked Israel for patience before launching a ground attack on Gaza. This inexorable fact would make the situation of the hostages even more dramatic and delicate due to the additional degree of uncertainty. And the relatives know this.
" I am scared. I ask the Government to first do everything for the elderly hostages. My mother was not a soldier. Israel does not do this, Israel defends but does not kill. Warn with pamphlets. I don't want anything bad to happen to them, but no one warned my mother before." Israel, 2023.
