On October 7, in the Nir Oz kibbutz, less than three kilometers from the Gaza Strip, the Kalderon family was suddenly awakened at dawn by the sound of bombs. In the Figaro Live show “Points de Vue”, Hadas, the mother, recounts the unspeakable. That day, his two children aged 12 to 16, Erez and Sahar, “witnessed the pogrom with their own eyes. They saw everything: the 200 to 300 terrorists, the shootings, the houses on fire, the bodies on the ground…,” she tells our journalist.
Hidden for hours, they were however unable to escape the kidnapping. The children spend 52 days in captivity, “without seeing sunlight for two months”, separated from each other, and even from their father, Ofer, who is still held hostage. On the evening of November 27, the negotiating agreement between Hamas and Israel included the liberation of Erez and Sahar. “An indescribable moment,” recalls Hadas Kalderon with restraint, even though she was warned “two or three hours before, by a call from the Israeli army,” of the repatriation of her flesh.
However, “nothing will ever be the same again,” says Ofer’s ex-wife, still a hostage but of whom they “have no news.” Perhaps he has already died, no one seems to know. “We are in total darkness. If by some miracle he is alive today, perhaps tomorrow he will no longer be alive. Day after day, we learn that hostages are being killed…,” recalls Hadas Kalderon in “Points of View,” his voice overcome with emotion.
From now on, families from Kibbutz Nir Oz are refugees on the border with Egypt. The village is in ashes, decimated. “We no longer have a home. They even killed the dogs and cats, our elders, while they were curled up in their beds,” she says. The wound is far from being healed, as the survivors know that “it’s a miracle for (them). The terrorists walked through the kibbutz as if it were their own village. They feared nothing, came to massacre, to kill”, then, intoxicated by the horror, “to smoke a cigarette, take a bite from the fridge and make a coffee.”
Finally, the mother of Sahar and Efez, Franco-Israeli, is now urging the Israeli, Egyptian, Gazan and Qatari governments to get back around the table to free the hostages still alive, including the father of her children, “citizens innocent people who are not soldiers. Then conclude: “You saved the women and children, save the men too!”
