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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.