Nira Sharabi had plans to visit Portugal with her husband Yossi. A ‘normal couple’, with both Portuguese and Israeli citizenship, who wanted to travel and get to know the land of their ancestors. But she is alone in Lisbon. Her husband was kidnapped by Hamas from his home in Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7 and taken to the Gaza Strip. Her daughters, Yuval, 17, Ofir, 14, and Oren, 13, who like her were spared, remained in Israel while Nira left to appeal to the Portuguese and the international community to do everything possible to to help free her husband. “Mom, are you going back home?” one of her daughters asked her before she left.

Like Yossi, 53, his brother Eli, 51, is also among the 138 hostages the Israeli army believes are still in the hands of Hamas. Eli Sharabi’s wife and two daughters are listed among approximately 1,200 victims of the terrorist attack; their bodies were found a week later charred in what was left of the house.

Nira explained to DN at a hotel in Lisbon that she does not know what prompted the terrorists to abandon her and her daughters after they managed to get them out of the safe room, out of the shelter. The husband tried to hold the door open, but the shelters were prepared for rocket attacks and not for the presence of terrorists in the next room.

She remembers the silence for hours, as they saw on their cell phones first the warning that terrorists were suspected in the kibbutz, and then the confirmation that there were. And among the group of mothers, the news that they heard Arabic spoken at home, followed by messages such as “they killed my father”, “please help us”… And then the moment when the gun went through the doorway. The shot killed the family dog. His daughter told him about the deafening noise. She doesn’t remember.

“My husband and my daughter’s boyfriend, Ofir, 17, were kidnapped after taking us from one place to another. With another teenager named Amit, they took the three of us together in a black car and left us in the kibbutz,” she says, saying it was the last time she saw her husband. Amid the confusion, she and her daughters hid until they were rescued by the Israeli army the next day.

Ofir and Amit were released last week during the seven-day truce after seeing Yossi in Gaza. “He was still alive then, I don’t know now. Physically he was fine, mentally it’s a different story. But I’m very afraid that he might not come back.”

Live on Facebook

Tamara Idan didn’t need to be in Nahal Oz to know what happened to her husband’s cousin, Tsachi Idan, his wife and the couple’s three children. The terrorists broadcast everything live on Facebook. “When they entered the house, they killed his eldest daughter Maayan. Her blood was on his hands. We saw everything live on Facebook, we saw it live,” she tells DN emotionally. “The younger children were shouting: ‘Please don’t kill my father, don’t take him away’.”

Yahel, 11, and Shahar, 9, who saw their sister murdered and their father kidnapped, are now in the care of Tamara and her husband. “We’ll help until they get their father back,” he explained. The children “are traumatized”, receive psychological support from day one, and only want their father, who is 51 years old and has dual Israeli and Portuguese citizenship. “They don’t even have a house to go back to, theirs burned down. But all they want is their father.”

Tsachi was taken by nine terrorists, prepared men and not “the normal thief who comes to rob your house.” They “came to kill,” says Tamara. And to think that hours earlier she was exchanging messages and laughing with her husband, who jokingly said ‘we’re next’ – because they live in the north, close to the border with Lebanon – without having any idea of ​​the seriousness of what happened. “It was 9am and we were relieved because if the warning had been at 6am then everything would have been fine. They were in the safe room, my condolences went to those who had died, but I’m sure the military was already there and they were fine,” he said.

That’s when he turned on Facebook and saw there was a live video of Tsachi’s wife. At first she thought it was her husband’s cousin, a software engineer, and thought he was clever, using Facebook to help the military as the network sometimes went down and there were communication problems. “I immediately, within seconds, shared that it was my husband’s family, if anyone could help. And it wasn’t until later that I saw the video.” Only later did he see that the family was trapped, that the terrorists were grabbing the children – the ‘babies’, as he calls them – and said that even though they were about ten years old, they were always babies . And they cried. “I felt helpless, my body gave out, I screamed, I don’t even know what happened to me,” she admitted.

In the video, he said, Tsachi, a force of nature, can be seen completely “destroyed”, with his daughter’s blood on his hands, in his pajamas, barefoot. “He left the house physically healthy, but mentally he was devastated,” he reports, asking the Red Cross to be allowed to see the hostages to ensure they are physically healthy.

Parallel reality

Nira feels like she has been living in a parallel reality since October 7. “That day it was as if reality stopped. I started living in another world, which is parallel to this one. I can’t believe that I wake up every morning without my husband by my side. That my brother-in-law The family of the law is erased in an instant,” he says, saying he just wants to wake up. And watch all the hostages for free, remember that behind every name, every number, there are many stories

“I am so happy for all the families who already have their people back. But I cannot understand why the world remains silent towards others,” he laments, asking for more intervention from everyone. “The world is not doing enough. Imagine what it would be like without your husband, without your children. One day someone comes into your house, into your room, on a normal day, and takes away the person who is most loved is important to you, to you and take her to a place where no one knows what is happening, no one knows what they eat and how they are treated.’ In Israel, he feels like “the whole country is being held mentally hostage, waiting for their return.”

When asked whether the Israeli government is doing everything it can to save her family, Nira answers yes, but reiterates that Israel needs help from others, from Portugal, the European Union, from those with a direct connection to Hamas, to return to negotiate the release of the hostages. “If it were up to me, I would give them everything they wanted.” Tamara believes that no one in Israel would object if it was just a prisoner exchange. “But we don’t know what Hamas is asking for,” he explains.

In addition to Nira and Tamara, relatives of Idan Shtivi, who was kidnapped from the music festival for which he had volunteered as a photographer, are also in Portugal. The aim is to seek the support of the Portuguese, after they met yesterday with the mayor of Lisbon, Carlos Moedas, but also with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, João Gomes Cravinho, and in parliament with several deputies, and with the Red Cross. Today they are holding a press conference.

The notebook is coming to an end

Nira said she gave her daughters a notebook, one each, so they could write down how their day was every night. She has one too. They started writing on the 7th. “We wrote to Yossi telling him what we were doing because we don’t want him to miss a single moment. We wrote down every moment we spent without him because all the little things seem so important now.” , he explains through tears. “At first I thought: it will be one day, two. I didn’t believe it would last long. I count minus one, minus two. Now it is sixty days minus. And I tell myself that… maybe I don’t have enough notebook to keep writing.’

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