Nir Oz members: Our kibbutz ‘woke up to a massacre, a second Holocaust’

LONDON – Every Friday, Sharon Lifschitz’s 85-year-old peace activist father would drive up to the Gaza border and collect a patient to take to a hospital in east Jerusalem. He employed people from Gaza when the border was open – and, with the rest of his kibbutz community, ensured they were still paid when it wasn’t.

But that didn’t stop heartless Hamas terrorists stealing him and his 83-year-old wife from their safe room at Nir Oz – along with 78 other members of the 800-strong community. Among them was Ada Sagi who should have been celebrating her 70th birthday in London today with her psychotherapist son Noam.

Sharon, 52, and Noam, 53, joint British and Israeli citizens who grew up in Nir Oz, held around 100 members of the international media spellbound at a press conference in London, in which they demanded that Hamas needed to be pressured into letting the abducted people go.

Hardened journalists were left in tears as the two spoke for more than an hour. “On Saturday morning, the Kibbutz where I was born and grew up, woke to a massacre – a second Holocaust,” said Noam. “Mostly young kids and elderly people. They gassed, burned, slaughtered, kidnapped. They burned the place to the ground – they even shot the dogs. There is nothing left. This was a peace-loving people that fought all of their lives for coexistence.”

Sharon said she was a peaceful person but was struggling not to hate. “What we are facing is an act of such barbarity that it is coaxing me into hate, into rage, into wanting to destroy because of this senseless, horrific act of destruction that has taken so much from me but even more from my community,’ said the artist and academic.”

Names of those abducted

At the press conference, photographs were shown of several of the other people – from the total of 80 – who were abducted from the kibbutz. Six-month-old baby Ariel, 17-year-old Timer Eliaz Arava, Tamar Adar, 38, Yafa Adar, 85, Noam Elyakim and Dikla Aava,50, as well as Dafna Elyakim, Ela Elyakim, Nahal Oz and others whose names were not given – just some of the members of this community who were stolen into Gaza.

“All the children are the children of our friends that we grew up with,” said Sharon whose mother was disconnected from her oxygen. “I am here on their behalf, to be their voice. I would like to be in Israel helping the survivors but I know we have work to do. There are mothers waiting for their children; I am asking the world on their behalf to help bring them back home.”

Both said they had been surrounded by love in the UK but attacked the media for not calling the assailants terrorists; a row which has seen MPs attacking the BBC. “I don’t accept butchery from Boko Haram, Islamic State, or from our neighbors Hamas,” said Sharon. “We want peace but Hamas has shown us that they have no mercy.”