The messages on metal music forums expressing their determination to “bring home” drummer Yotam Haim alive and “safely” constitute today the lament of a blues. The 28-year-old, fast with the drumsticks, lover of pets, heavy metal and metal, is one of the three Israeli hostages killed by 'friendly fire' from an army unit in Gaza. The three murders shock the country and shake the international community, especially the United States, Tel Aviv's main ally.
The White House has declared that it shares “mourning with the families” after the “heartbreaking news” that confirms one of its worst fears: the death of Hamas captives at the hands of Israel's own forces in the midst of a crushing military operation that ignores all calls to prudence. The tragedy has overwhelmed thousands of citizens who on Friday afternoon and this Saturday morning took to the streets with banners to demand the “safe return” of the hostages and criticize the management carried out by the Government of Benjamin Netanyahu. Protesters left an Israeli flag covered in red paint outside the Ministry of Defense
From Yotam there remains the legacy of dozens of videos posted on the networks immersed in essays and master classes. His last concert recorded by an amateur dates back to August 31, a month and a half before he was kidnapped in his house in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, one of the many communes near the Strip attacked by terrorists. Precisely, that week Yotam was supposed to play with his band Persephore in a gig that will never take place. A faithful follower of the Bayonne band Gojira, he repeated one by one all the bars of their favorite song, 'Le ́efant Sauvage'. Appeals from musicians from different backgrounds asking for his release and that of the rest of the hostages dot the networks headed with photographs of him doing what he liked most: playing the drums.
However, it is Yotam's last image that hurts the most. The same morning of the Islamist offensive she recorded herself with her cell phone in her house in the kibbutz. In the background, the gunshots of the assailants who systematically riddled their neighbors could already be heard. The young man, desperate, sent the video to his mother, Iris Haim, whom he “loved deeply. He used to imitate her and call her Mamo,' her friends remember. In the recording she says that “they are shooting at the house, at the door, at the safe room,” the woman explained this past Tuesday at a press conference.
From that moment on, nothing more was known about him until the Defense Forces contacted the family many hours later to inform them that Yotam had been kidnapped by Hamas. Only embers remained of his house. There he “raised dogs and cats, which were his passion.” The jihadists “had set it on fire.” Among his embers his battery was lost, charred.
From Eurovision to hospitals
The two long months of captivity until the fatal outcome have been a painful pentagram. They have even been punctuated by music and tears. Dozens of tribute videos. Improvised concerts. His bandmates have gathered in the rehearsal room simply to play and remember him. Tuvi Haim, his brother, participated in them. They both learned to play with the same drums. Then each one took their own path in music.
Tuvi belongs to Netta's band, the young woman in her thirties who won Eurovision in 2018 with the catchy melody of 'Toy'. The Israeli artist has spent many hours accompanying the Haim family, suffering “panic attacks every time I open Instagram because I'm afraid of discovering another friend I lost.” Since the terrorist offensive, she has gone to sing at the hospitals where the wounded rest and to pay “tribute” at the funerals of those who have not been so lucky. She will be present at the funeral of Yotam, whose body has already been transferred to Israel, and she will pray for “the arrival of better days.” On her brother's networks, Tuvi, a message has been suspended: “My brother, please come back to me, we are waiting for you.”
Samar Fouad Talalka, 22, is another of the hostages killed by Israel's own troops. The pain is accentuated due to the circumstances of death: Talalka was struck down when he was about to touch freedom. Like Yotam. Or like Alon Shamriz, a 26-year-old computer science student, who was kidnapped in the Kfar Aza kibbutz where 63 residents lost their lives at the hands of the militiamen.
The three were trying to escape this Friday among the ruins of Shejaiya, a neighborhood in northern Gaza, where the army was fighting intense combat with Hamas members. It is unknown whether the hostages had managed to escape the control of their captors or whether they were left abandoned to their fate as the fighting intensified. Tel Aviv announced this Saturday the opening of an investigation to determine why the soldiers mistook them for terrorists, even more so after the enormous intelligence work behind each military operation, while studying how to apply new “measures” to identify the perpetrators. hostages in battle zones. Military sources estimate that there are still at least a hundred Hamas prisoners and that many of them are being held in the underground redoubts against which the army is now fighting fiercely. In this context, it is not ruled out that the terrorists abandon the kidnapped people to go out to fight or flee from the soldiers.
The first morning shift
Samar Fouad Talaka worked on a chicken farm in Kibbutz Nir Am. Every day he traveled from Rahat, the Bedouin municipality where he lived, to the farm. He got up early. He was in charge of the work of the first shift in the morning. For this reason, the deadly assault by the Islamist militia surprised him at his post at seven in the morning. He only had time to call one of her sisters and tell her that she had suffered a gunshot wound and he feared the worst. Then the signal was lost. “They tried to contact him, but he didn't respond,” a co-worker said. They learned that he had survived after a video of him being taken as a hostage to Gaza went viral.
Those who knew him define him as “a great guy” who wanted to “earn an honest living.” His family was the first Arab to join an Israeli delegation to travel to the United States and raise awareness among congressmen and Republicans about the urgent need to protect the lives of captives. His father, Fouad Talalka, also met with prominent representatives of the Arab community in the United States to denounce the Hamas massacre, which killed 19 Bedouins and injured dozens, and to share the “painful tragedy” of his son, “carried violently into Gaza” by a “terrorist group that does not recognize any human distinction.”
Just a few days before learning of the dramatic outcome, the young man's father stated that “this goes beyond politics. “They are innocent lives.” This Saturday, the mayor of the Bedouin city of Rahat exclaimed: “What bitter news: Bedouins and Jews were taken hostage together, managed to flee together in an effort to continue with their lives, and ended their lives together in this event.” so tragic.”
Alon Shamriz is the “grandson who is not with us,” as his grandfather, Yoel Eshel, 91, described him after his October 7 kidnapping. The young aspiring computer scientist, the third hostage killed by the Israeli military this Friday in Gaza, lived three kilometers from the Strip. Yoel remembers him as a “very nice boy, very willing to deal with everyone” and with whom it was “easy to talk about all kinds of topics.”
In the photographs he always appears smiling. One of them is taken in Villa Devoto, in Argentina, where her grandfather left in 1955 for Israel in search of settling with his family in the land of his ancestors. Alon had it done during a trip to South America after completing his military service. Yoel asked him to visit her hometown. She now she hugs the photo. The other image that those close to him observe at this moment from the depths of pain is the emoji of a heart, the last message that Alon was able to send to his older brother, Yonatan, during the Hamas offensive.
“You are strong, I love you”
The two worked in a carpentry shop in Kfar Aza. Alon lived in a student residence. At 6:30 a.m. on October 7, the moment hell opened its doors in Israel, the young man jumped out of bed alerted by the air raid sirens. His brother, who lives in another area of the kibbutz, had already left with his wife and his two-year-old daughter to a domestic shelter where they spent 22 hours locked up. Yonatan called him on the phone. Alon replied that he could not flee because the militiamen were already in the building. “You are strong, I love you, stay still,” Yonatan told him. Next, his heart emoji rang on his cell phone. Communication was cut off. Alon's cell phone was discovered two days later destroyed.
The student was among the 21 hostages of Argentine nationality kidnapped by the militia. His body has been taken to Israel along with that of another compatriot, Ron Sherman, a 19-year-old sergeant kidnapped in a barracks near Gaza, whose last image is that of desperation. The militants filmed him visibly restless and scared in the company of other captives before taking them to Gaza. Before being captured, he sent his parents a message in which he foreshadowed his end: “It's all over, I'm finished, I love you very much.”
Sherman was the nephew of Leon Gieco, the veteran Argentine musician and singer-songwriter who weeks ago called for “a peaceful solution to this ancient and cruel conflict.” The sergeant's body was located by Israeli troops along with that of a corporal, Nik Beizer, 20, and that of a civilian taken prisoner during the Supernova festival, one of the main objectives of the terrorists in which they were killed or injured. hundreds of young people injured.
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