‘Voice in the dark’ – hostage’s mom speaks out

The agony of a mother whose daughter she believes has been trapped in a suffocating tunnel in Gaza for nearly a year, petrified and starving in the dark, or even worse, deceased, is unimaginable.

“This is my reality, this is my every waking minute,” said Simona Steinbrecher, the mother of Doron, 31, who has been held captive by Hamas terrorists in Gaza for 349 days.

“I’m her voice in the dark,” she told the SA Jewish Report this week.

Steinbrecher is close friends with her former neighbour in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, released South African hostage Aviva Siegel, whose husband, Keith, is still in captivity. Their friendship has been solidified by 11 months of anguish over their missing loved ones.

Steinbrecher is one of 11 mothers of the remaining female hostages presumed alive. They fear their daughters are holding on by a thread. They know deep down that time is running out, and that a deal securing their release is urgent. They also know that they are at the mercy of dangerous men capable of unspeakable, hideous atrocities. And they are flabbergasted by the world’s flat response to their daughter’s plight.

“It hurts,” she said. “My heart breaks over and over again.”

“We know what they have done to female hostages,” Steinbrecher said, alluding to testimony by released hostages of sexual assault and torture.

Steinbrecher and the other mothers cling to scraps of information, grasping at anything that might shed light on their daughters’ conditions and whereabouts.

Every moment, she says, feels like a crushing weight, knowing that her daughter is in the hands of merciless captors. Each day stretches into an eternity as she imagines the terror of being confined in an unknown place, helpless and surrounded by danger. Sleepless nights blur into one another.

Yet, in spite of her anguish and that of the other mothers, they refuse to give up hope and they fight to have their stories told so the rest of the world won’t forget about them.

“A mother’s love doesn’t stop, it fights,” Steinbrecher said

From protest marches calling for a hostage deal to appearances at the Knesset and solidarity trips to the United States and Europe, their activism is astonishing.

Doron is a veterinary nurse. “She’s beautiful inside and out, and puts other people’s needs first,” Steinbrecher said.

“I don’t know where she is or what state she’s in. No-one has seen her or heard from her. We don’t know if she’s alone. We know nothing,” she said.

Steinbrecher holds a poster showing a photograph of Doron pre-7 October alongside a photograph of her taken in captivity and released by Hamas on 26 January, 107 days after her abduction.

In it she looks pale, like a shadow of her former self with sunken, pleading eyes.

“That was nearly eight months ago. I lie awake and imagine what she looks like now,” Steinbrecher said, pointing out that her daughter requires daily medication which she presumes she’s not getting.

Doron was alone in her Kibbutz Kfar Aza apartment on 7 October when Hamas terrorists invaded the kibbutz, killing, raping, and abducting dozens of residents.

She was in her apartment in the kibbutz housing for younger, single residents, but remained on the family WhatsApp group, her sister and parents not far from her on the kibbutz in their own houses.

At 06:30, everyone on the kibbutz reported that they were in their safe rooms. They all thought the security forces would arrive, and they’d soon be saved. They never imagined a massacre.

Her sister, Yamit Ashkenazi, was with her own family, including her young children, who remained in their sealed room for 21 hours without food or water, until 01:00.

Doron’s mother and father, Roni, locked themselves inside and kept very quiet while the terrorists used their garden as a meeting place. “They must have thought there was no-one home as they didn’t try to enter. That was a miracle,” Steinbrecher said.

The terrorists tried unsuccessfully to break into Ashkenazi’s house, but moved on when they heard dogs barking.

At 10:30, Doron told her parents that she was scared and that the terrorists had arrived at her building. She then sent a voice message in which she said, “They’ve arrived, they have me.”

That was the family’s only indication that Doron was abducted, along with other details including that her room wasn’t set on fire and her body wasn’t found.

One of the most excruciating nights of Steinbrecher’s life was on 31 August, when the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced that it had found the bodies of six hostages in a tunnel in Rafah. The names weren’t released until hours later after the bodies had been identified.

“It was the longest night of my life,” she said.

“All the families of the hostages were together at Hostage Square in Tel Aviv. We found out only after midnight, and it brought so much pain and agony to those parents whose children’s bodies were found.

“I knew Carmel Gat. To think she was killed moments before being rescued after 11 months of hell! We need a deal now before another hostage dies,” she said.

Another agonising day was Doron’s 31st birthday on 18 March.

“The family including my five grandchildren who adore Doron, held a picnic and released balloons in the air to send to her. We needed it to be a happy day, but she wasn’t there and we couldn’t hold her,” she said.

“I’m afraid for her. Apart from the scarcity of water or food, she needs medicine. If I could send her a message, I would tell her that we love her, and are waiting for her.”

The mothers of the female hostages are closely united in their anguish, she said.

“We need to push the world to cry for them to come home. We cry, but it’s not enough. We need the world to cry with us,” she said.

It’s believed that 97 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on 7 October remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 33 confirmed dead by the IDF.