Eden Yerushalmi’s flight, kidnapping and murder in Gaza: “She was my daughter and my best friend” international

Shirit Yerushalmi raises her arms and covers her face with her hands in a defensive stance to illustrate the story of what her daughter’s last moments were like. Eden, who turned 24 during the nearly 11 months of her kidnapping in Gaza, was murdered by her captors late last August, according to autopsy data provided to the family and the Israeli military’s version. The family had three proofs of survival, the last a few days ago when the young woman was shot at close range. “They shot him in the head. He tried to protect himself and was shot in both hands,” said the mother, who relies on information she received from investigators. He speaks to EL PAÍS from his home on the outskirts of Tel Aviv. He still has difficulty referring to his daughter in the past tense.

A hundred abducted people remain in the strip and during the war, several fronts were burned and Hamas leader Yahia Sinwar was assassinated, with no upcoming deal suggested for their release, although many of them Already presumed dead. , This Friday, October 18, a day after announcing the death of the head of the radical group, the army said it had also killed Mahmoud Hamdan, the head of that organization in Tel al-Sultan (Rafa). Just 200 meters away from where Sinwar fell. Israel held Hamdan responsible not only for the safety of the leader, but also for the group of six hostages, of which Yerushalmi was a part. They all died in a tunnel dug nearby.

However, Shirit does not want to put the blame on the army or Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. “Israel is doing everything possible to free them,” she says, while a large photo of her daughter hangs on the living room floor, posing with her sisters May 19 and Shani ( 26) is watching him between his comings and goings. Shani is the person with whom Eden spoke the longest on the phone, giving a live account of the Hamas attack on October 7, his escape attempt, and his eventual capture by radicals. “Shani, they got me,” was the last thing his sister whispered, as the family told this newspaper last November.

The family facilitated and authorized this newspaper to publish the recording of the call he made to police from Eden during the massacre, while he watched jihadists firing left and right around him. They are four minutes of the affair, which give an idea of ​​the adventures of the young woman before she falls into the hands of her kidnappers. “They are shooting at me. “This can’t happen to me,” she warns while gunshots are heard on the phone and a police officer, whom Eden sometimes tells to keep quiet due to the proximity of the attackers, attempts to get her to open a message. The young woman, desperate, says to not look at her phone. These are the first moments of a major attack led by Hamas that killed 1,200 people, about a third of them at the Nova music festival, where Eden worked as a waitress and from where she helped a few kilometers from Gaza. Had called for.

“Everything will be OK,” the officer on the other end of the line tries to reassure him, but barely understands what or where it is happening. “They are here, they see me, they are shooting at me. I beg you, send the police,” she says, while voices in Arabic can be heard in the background. “That’s it. “I’m going to die,” the girl says. A few moments later, without cutting off communication, he begins to run through the trees. “Don’t stop running. Try to hide (.. .) We need to end the call, okay?” The police say on the other end of the line. “Please find me. “I’m hiding,” she pleads. The recording ends there.

A few days after the sighting, officials confirmed the kidnapping to the family. First, his captors took him to central Gaza. Then, in November, in the far south, next to the Egyptian border, in Rafah, where they murdered him. On the afternoon of Saturday, August 30, rumors, messages on social networks, fear spread… Calls and visits to Yerushalmi’s relatives and neighbors continued, the list in which Eden appeared was spread. There were no fair winds blowing from the Palestinian Strip, but, in the absence of official confirmation, Shirit still held on to hope for her “girl” to return home alive. “We remained optimistic,” he recalls. It was this that helped him carry on amid the bombardment of uncertainty during the long months of the war.

The army liaison officer, who was with them at this time, showed up at the house amid the commotion. He, a reserved man about whom the Yerushalmi family has only good words, did not have reliable information at the time, as it was night. The soldier stayed with Shirit, Shani, May and another small group of family members till 3 am on Sunday.

Barely half an hour had passed when the constable returned with other officers carrying the fatal news. They identified Eden’s body thanks to DNA samples that Father Naor had provided during the kidnapping. That Saturday was Shirit’s 50th birthday. She had already assumed that they would not celebrate it together, but she never imagined that it would coincide with the shock of his death.

“She was not only my daughter, she was my best friend,” he says, recalling Vishal’s words during her funeral. That day, in front of the body, he said: “This is not how I had imagined your end. My girl, I wanted so much to bring you back to life. (…) I don’t know how I’ll get out of here, but I’ll try. “I continue to mourn, I cry often, everything is very recent,” Shirit says after the interview. ShivaFollowing a week of condolences that saw hundreds of people visit him, some relatives of the hostages are still in Gaza. “I need to learn how to live with Eden’s absence, because I still have two daughters,” admits the mother, whose intention, as soon as she feels better, is to return to her job at the post office. , from where she never returned. From 7th October.

Eden Yerushalmi and five others were returned to Israel in body bags, among 251 hostages captured on October 7, after 330 days of captivity in Gaza. “His body weight was only 36 kg. Trying to imagine the harsh conditions of captivity, his mother recounted, he had lost 11″. The army showed photographs of the tunnel, which, according to the families, was about 60 centimeters wide and 1.7 meters high, lacked sanitation and barely had oxygen and light. Eden’s name, along with two other hostages killed along with him, had been included since July on a list to be released in the event of a deal in the so-called “humanitarian category”, two Israeli officials confirmed to CNN after the recovery. .of dead bodies. “Our Prime Minister delayed it,” one of them said.

Popular outrage after the six deaths, fueled by the arrival of six other hostage bodies a few days earlier, turned into the largest demonstrations of the entire war against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. There are still 101 hostages, of whom, according to the latest information, only half are alive. There are no signs of a ceasefire that would open the door to the release of hostages in Gaza, which is under an intense Israeli offensive where troops have already killed more than 42,500 people.

Eden’s parents and members of five other families released a letter through the magazine on September 25 Time In which they criticize the lack of an agreement and demand that something be done to protect the people living inside the strip. The government had the opportunity to “reach an agreement” to “free our loved ones” and “due to calculations that they considered strategic, they decided not to do so,” condemned the letter in which they called on the international community. Also pointed out the inaction of. As “accomplices to avoidable deaths”.

According to the official version, the six hostages were shot dead by their captors at close range as Israeli soldiers approached. Shirit says he believes it was Thursday, August 29, two days before the army found the bodies. Later, on September 21, the army showed a photo showing two young men in one of those underground passages with the words taken out Everything has been written about each of them. They claim that they killed them because they believed them, due to DNA tests, to be two of the people responsible for Eden’s captivity and the other five who were kidnapped. “Pure evil,” Shirit’s brother Guy Ezaki responded via a message a few days after accompanying her to the interview.

In addition to the above calls to the police, Eden broadcast to his family via cell phone for several hours what was happening on the Esplanade, where the Nova festival was taking place with several thousand youth over the weekend. He takes refuge with his friends Dorin and Lior in the car, before trying to escape through the woods. Both died when the vehicle was riddled with bullets and Eden remained unharmed under their bodies. He kept telling everything, especially to his sister Shani, until the battery ran out. She then managed to continue communication with the phone number of one of her killed friends, her mother said. “I feel blood dripping all over me,” she told her family via cell phone.

“We know that Israel is facing a terrorist organization. If they manage to eliminate them, October 7 will not happen again,” understands Shirit, who recalls with the reporter how in November, at the last meeting with him, he asked to interview Eden after the liberation. Was asked to return to the same house. ,