Noam Sagi, 53, discovered that his mum Ada Sagi had been abducted from her home on a tiny kibbutz a few kilometers from the border with Gaza.
She is thought to be among more than 60 hostages being held by Hamas militants in the Palestinian enclave. Mr Sagi said:: “I was woken up on Saturday morning by my sister saying that she had been in touch with my mother and that at around 9 a.m. she lost contact with her.
“She said that my mother ran into her safe room and after that, we did not hear anything until the Israeli army went in at 4 p.m.
“They found her house empty with bloodstains everywhere.” He added that the kibbutz where he grew up had been completely destroyed in what Israelis say is the worst terror attack ever to have been carried out on their soil.
Mr Sagi, who moved to London some 20 years ago, said: “We know that she is not on the dead list, the injured list, or the rescued list.
“We saw her front door on videos uploaded to social media by Palestinian reporters and my heart just dropped.” “By now we know what happened on the kibbutz on Saturday and there is no other way to describe it except to say that it was a Holocaust.
“They gassed them, they burned them, they butchered them and looted their homes – anyone who was still alive, even the
elderly and small babies, were taken back to Gaza.
“There is nothing left of my kibbutz, it is gone and whoever survived is so mentally distraught I don’t know how they will go on living.
“A kibbutz is a small community, there are people there who changed my nappy, taught me how to swim, and who worked closely with me growing up, this is just devastating.”
He said his mother who was the headmistress of a regional school until retiring a few years ago, spoke fluent Arabic which gave them a “glimmer” of hope that she would be reasonably treated.
He said: “She became an Arabic teacher because she believed that creating a better future could only be done with good communication and building bridges with your neighbors”.
“I hope the fact she speaks Arabic will make whoever has her see as a human being. To whoever has her, my message is clear: release the under 18s and the over 65s immediately and without any conditions, according to international and humanitarian law you cannot use the elderly and kids as a bargaining chip”.
Mr. Sagi said, that while he was touched by the outpouring of support from world leaders such as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, “we hope they can translate their sympathy and words into action.”
