There’s a big wall on Miami Beach with photographs of the hostages. A year after Hamas kidnapped them from Israel and brought them to Gaza, 101 of them are still there. Many others have perished in captivity, either murdered by Hamas or, in one tragic case, killed by friendly fire.
Alon Shamriz was one of three hostages who escaped together but was killed by an IDF sniper who mistook them for Hamas ambushers. “It’s not something you can get over; it’s something you’ll have to deal with for the rest of your life,” said Oded Eshel, Shamriz’s first cousin.
Eshel now resides in Fort Lauderdale, although he had numerous family in Kfar Aza, one of the communities destroyed by Hamas during its October 7th massacre. Terrorists forced Shamriz out of his bullet-riddled saferoom. He and two colleagues suffered two months of torture in Gaza’s tunnels before battling their way free. “And then survives five days above ground, attempting to get the IDF to rescue them, and then he does all in his power to show he’s not a threat, and he’s still taken out by one of his own; it’s unbelievably tragic,” Eshel told me. He was asked what the previous twelve months had been like for him and his family.
“For me, it’s been the worst year of my life; you get touched by this unimaginable tragedy, which lots of people encountered, but then also to see how many millions of people around the world applauded that, has been so detrimental, deeply, really painful,” he said.
