Among the hostages kidnapped by Hamas who were freed today there is also the Filipino Gelienor ‘Jimmy’ Leano Pacheco. Thirty-three-year-old father of three, Pacheco had been taking care of eighty-year-old Amitai Ben Zvi in Kibbutz Nir Oz for four years, writes Times of Israel.
Nir Oz is a small community of 400 people three km from the border with Gaza. During the massacre carried out by Hamas on October 7, more than 100 kibbutz residents and 15 foreign agricultural workers were killed. About 80 other people, including Jimmy Pacheco, were kidnapped and taken to Gaza. That morning, Pacheco managed to call his friends saying that he was being kidnapped and that the elderly Amitai, who he called Abba (father in Hebrew), had been killed.
Hours later, the Ben Zvi family received a video of Jimmy handcuffed in a car in Gaza from the Pacheco family in the Philippines. Another Hamas video surfaced on Telegram showing the caregiver surrounded by a screaming crowd. Jimmy always cared for my father “with quiet and admirable devotion, always attentive to his needs,” Amitai’s daughter said.
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