Iranwire – Since October 7, Avi Shamriz, an Iranian Jew, has waited for his phone to ring for news on his son, Alon. He’s still waiting.
Two months after Alon was taken hostage during an attack on Israel by extremists from Hamas, which has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union, Avi Shamriz, whose Iranian first name is Kamran, hopes the phone will ring.
“We have no news. From October 7, when we received information that my son was kidnapped until now, we don’t know if he’s dead, alive, or injured,” Shamriz told RFE/RL’s Radio Farda in a brief phone interview on December 6.
Hamas killed more than 1,200 Israelis — mainly civilians — in the October 7 raid, and took some 240 hostages back to the Gaza Strip, where Israel has launched an intense war in the aftermath of the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust.
Since the war began, swaps of dozens of hostages and Palestinians held in Israeli prisons have taken place.
Shamriz, who spoke from Tel Aviv where the family was evacuated after the Hamas attack, said they believe Alon is in Gaza, as he has yet to turn up on any list of those who died in the attack on October 7.
So he scours video and reports from those released for any tidbit of information on his son, a 26-year-old student of computer engineering from the Kfar Aza kibbutz near the border with Gaza.
Israeli officials says seniors, women, and children have been the priority so far in negotiations for the release of hostages. That would put Avi Shamriz down on the priority list.
“[The Israeli hostages] who have been freed haven’t seen my son. They took 19 hostages from [Kfar] Aza and 10 of them have returned home. But none of them saw my son,” he said.
The cease-fire to allow the trading of hostages for prisoners broke down over the weekend.
Israel has since resumed its withering attack on Gaza, where an estimated 138 hostages remain, as it hunts Hamas fighters.
On December 5, Israel’s military entered Khan Younis, Gaza’s second-largest city, as aid agencies warned of dire humanitarian conditions that are growing worse by the day.
The Shamriz family knows only that Alon has yet to turn up.
“The war has resumed [after a temporary truce], but my son is still there. I’m scared that something will happen to him,” Shamriz said.
“We went and talked [to Israeli officials] and told them that this is not the time [for war]. First, they must save my son [and other hostages]. This is not the time for war. We went and talked and pleaded, but nothing. They are not a government.”