They exchanged text messages and emojis. Brief status updates with words of encouragement. A picture of the beloved family dog "Tutsi."
Until no more messages came.
And then, Cindy Flash, an American, and her Israeli husband Igal vanished into the violence, presumed kidnapped by Hamas.
Four days after Hamas attacked Israel, more than 100 Israelis and potentially dozens of foreign nationals are thought to be held captive in the Gaza Strip. At least 14 U.S. citizens have been killed and an unknown number are still unaccounted for.
Flash, 67, originally from St. Paul, Minnesota, is one of them. She lives in Kfar Aza, a kibbutz in southern Israel near Gaza, where some of the most harrowing and grisly stories have been emerging during the last few days.
"They are breaking down the safe room door," Flash said in one of her final messages to her daughter Keren, 34. "We need someone to come by the house right now." She had been communicating with her parents from a few houses away.
Keren described her mother, who worked as an administrator in a local college, as someone who had the "sweetest biggest heart," who everyone knew and loved, and who had spent a lifetime advocating for the rights of Palestinians, including those who live in Gaza where she may now be held.
Maybe don't vacation in or move to an occupied colonial outpost apartheid state.
Maybe people who behead babies don't deserve the land as much as Israel does?
Whatever helps you sleep at night knowing your country is doing active ethnic cleansing man.
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Israel only does surgical strikes with tactical explosives which were all trained to only blow up terrorists. /s
You mean the guys who bombed women and children civilians who were evacuating to egypt via the route they told civilians to evacuate along?
I dont think they deserve anything but sanctions and a guilty verdict for war crimes.
Did they? I saw a video of an explosion NEAR the border, not hitting the crowd. Is that what you're talking about?
There's for sure going to be a lot of collateral damage. Hamas uses their own people as human shields.
That's 100 percent on Hamas and on the Palestinian people who allow it.
The pass to egypt? That egypt had to close, because of israeli bombings? The pass israel explicitly told palestinian refugees to use to flee to egypt?
Hamas didnt use them as shields. Israel told them where to go to be safe, and then killed them for trusting their word.
Thats got fuckall to do with hamas. Quit making excuses for the inhuman monsters who populate the israeli government.
You're the one making excuses for inhuman monsters.
Right, those damned palestinian civilians. How dare they flee for their lives.
The fuck is wrong with you?
You're making excuses for Hamas. This is their war. They hide among their own women and children to use them as human shields.
Where in the statement "israel should not bomb civilian refugees who are escaping via the route israel told them to take in order to not be killed by israeli bombs" is hamas being excused?
You are making up non existant imagined enemies who, for some reason, want to leave the battlefield to go to egypt, instead of fight the war they started, in order to justify israeli genocidial war crimes.
Again. What the fuck is wrong with you?
Journalist who reported this as fact, later tweeted that they had only overheard it in a soldiers conversation.
No evidence that this happened.
Nice atrocity propaganda.
Plenty of independent reporting on this. It hasn't been confirmed, but it definitely hasn't been debunked either.