Families of kidnapped Americans in Gaza share desperate plea to secure their release in new ad
The families of American hostages being held captive in Gaza by Hamas terrorists are launching a national television ad campaign calling on all government officials to do everything possible to bring home the hostages before it is too late, according to a Thursday announcement.
"These terrorists are holding Americans hostage. Sons, brothers, fathers. Americans – brutalized and murdered. Act now or more will die," the ad said.
"Every second counts," the ad continued. "Do everything. Bring them home now."
The ad, paid for by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, showed images of the eight remaining American hostages – including two murdered on Oct. 7.
It's been three months since Hamas’ terrorist attack against Israel – considered by some to be the country's Sept. 11 – which featured terrorists raping, torturing, burning and slaughtering men, women and children of all ages.
More than 1,200 were murdered in Israel, and it is believed Hamas took 236 hostages into the Gaza Strip.
There are currently 133 remaining hostages, including eight American citizens, being kept under inhumane conditions in the Gaza Strip.
The group that bought the ad raised concerns about the hostages being raped and tortured.
"The families of these hostages say more needs to be done to secure the immediate release of the remaining hostages, or the hostages will not make it out alive," the group said.
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"We just celebrated my son Edan’s 20th birthday, but instead of being with his family, he spent his birthday in the dark, in the hands of Hamas terrorists. Time is running out," Yael Alexander, mother of Edan Alexander, who grew up in New Jersey, said.
"For nearly three months, my son Omer has been held hostage by Hamas. That's three months too long," Orna Neutra, mother of Omer Neutra, who grew up in Long Island, N.Y, said. "These are Americans. We cannot leave anyone behind, and I hope that lawmakers see the faces of their fellow Americans in this ad and continue to do everything they can to bring all of the hostages home."
The ad seeks to remind viewers of the brutality of the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks and the inhumane conditions that the hostages could be subjected to, including the loss of limbs as well as brutal rapes and sexual assault.
The ad will run nationally during select shows on cable news networks starting Thursday and during Sunday news programs.
One of the hostages who was kidnapped and then released in an exchange, Mia Shem, shared the details of the horror she went through in Gaza. She was, at first, confused because she was placed to stay with a Gaza family. Shem reported that the children and the wife of the family would taunt her and torture her psychologically. The family often left her starving and would threaten her if she cried.
"It’s important to me to reveal the truth about the people who live in Gaza, about who they really are," Shem said in an interview with Israel’s Channel 13 News.
"I went through a Holocaust," Shem said. "Everyone there [in Gaza] is a terrorist."
Shem, 21, was shot in her arm and was given an operation by a veterinarian, not a doctor, and without anesthesia, she said.
"There was an operation room. No anesthesia, no nothing. I was choking on my own tears. Then he looked at me and said, ‘Enough, or I’ll send you down to the tunnel,'" she said.
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Shem said she believed the only reason she wasn't raped was because the man's wife and kids were in the next room, but the fear of being helplessly assaulted caused her to develop epilepsy.
"After a CT scan of the head and an EEG, an outbreak of epilepsy was diagnosed, which I had never suffered from before. The trauma, malnutrition and lack of sleep, these are the things that caused it," she said. "My biggest fear there [in Gaza] was to be raped. For 55 days I was locked in a room with an armed Hamas terrorist who did not take his eyes off me while I’m wounded and helpless. And this is the price my body pays for all of this."