It has been nearly four weeks since Hamas kidnapped approximately 240 individuals, including 84-year-old Ditza Heiman, taking them into Gaza.
On October 7, when Ditza’s daughter called her, it was Hamas who answered the phone.
“They were shouting ‘It’s Hamas, it’s Hamas,'” recounted another daughter, Neta Heiman Mina, in an interview with the BBC.
“My sister was terrified, she hung up. I didn’t think they had taken her. I thought they had killed her.”
Ditza Heiman is currently being held captive in Gaza.
She was among those taken from Kibbutz Nir Oz when Hamas launched a deadly attack on Israel, resulting in the loss of 1,400 lives and the abduction of over 240 hostages.
Neta shared that she had been in contact with her mother in the morning, with Ditza being in her safe room and unaware of the situation outside.
“I don’t think she realized, or we realized, that the terrorists were at the kibbutz,” Neta said.
The last message Neta received from her mother was a few minutes before 10:00 local time. After that, her mother didn’t answer her phone.
Neta later spoke to one of her mother’s neighbours, who reported that Ditza had been calling for help. He ventured outside to see what was happening and witnessed her being taken away by Hamas gunmen.
“There were too many terrorists outside; they started shooting. He crawled back into his shelter. He was lucky,” Neta said.
On a Hamas Facebook page, Neta and her sister discovered a video showing their mother being taken. “They took her. They put her in a car. When we found the video, we knew she was alive.”
Ditza Heiman had spent her entire adult life in Nir Oz. A retired social worker, she had only recently stopped working and has 12 grandchildren, five great-grandchildren, and “so many more children who grew up with her and consider her to be family.”
(With information from BBC)
