Nightmare Phone Call Reveals Israeli Family of 10 Kidnapped by Hamas: ‘Survival, That’s Where We Are’ (Exclusive)

A family spanning grandparents, their adult children and grandchildren as young as 3 are believed to be held hostage in Gaza after chilling phone call confirmation

Shoshan Haran’s sunroom in her home in the Be'eri kibbutz was lined with orchids — so many, because her neighbors often brought their sickly plants to rehab under her care.

Today most of the house lies in black ash, torched by Hamas terrorists who are believed to have kidnapped Shoshan and her extended family of 10 into Gaza on Oct. 7 — the day Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,400 people and plunging the area into war.

For the Sukkot holiday, the Israeli family had gathered at the home of Shoshan, 67, and her husband Avshalom, 66, including their daughter Adi, 38, a psychologist, her husband Tal, and their two children Yael Neri, 3 and Naveh, 8; Avshalom’s sister Sharon Avigdori, a special needs psychologist, and her 12-year-old daughter, Noam.

They had been celebrating with Shoshan’s sister Lilah Kipnis, 60, a psychotherapist who works with children with trauma, and her husband Eviatar Moshe Kipnis, 65, who live nearby on the kibbutz.

All 10 family members are now missing. Eviatar’s caregiver, Paul Castelvi, has been identified among the dead. 

When sirens sounded on Oct. 7, the family members abided by the 15-second warning to run to their safe rooms. But soon the unthinkable occurred: Hamas gunmen were upon their doorsteps.

“We woke up early on that Saturday morning and heard there were missiles,” says Annalee Milstein, 34, who is married to Shoshan and Avshalom’s son Yuval, 36. The two also live on the Be'eri kibbutz but that weekend had traveled to a music festival (not the deadly Nova festival, which saw an estimated 260 killed). 

Related: Israeli Music Festival Survivor, 25, Shares Horror as Hamas Attack Began: 'I Was Prepared to Die' (Exclusive)

“We called them, we actually were able to reach Yuval’s mother Shoshan on the phone. She answered us whispering," recalls Milstein. "We didn’t understand why she was whispering. She said they were all together in the panic room.  It’s half past six in the morning. A few minutes later we went into the internal app of the kibbutz and we started seeing people sending live messages and we understood it’s not just a regular missile shooting.”

She continues: “We tried to call them [but] they didn’t answer us anymore and then we started texting them. We asked them what’s happening, who is there, if they are okay. They said they were all together in the panic room. They are very scared, they hear gunshots all over, they hear terrorists shouting. They [say they] are in deep trouble and they don’t know if they’ll survive it.”

At 10:30 a.m., the responses stopped. “That was the last time they had contact with them,” says Milstein. 

Related: President Biden Condemns Hamas Attacks on Israel as 'Pure, Unadulterated Evil'

The BBC reported the Be'eri attack lasted over 20 hours, as residents barricaded in safe rooms, frantically messaging each other on WhatsApp, asking how to lock the safe room doors, how to cope with black smoke as their homes were set on fire, and pleading for help as they waited for Israeli Defense Forces.

Since the brutal attack, the Haran family members have been trying to piece together information on their own. “Someone went to see their house, which was completely burned down and there weren’t any bodies there,” says Milstein. “Another piece of information that we got is a very good friend of Avshalom tried to call him many many times on Saturday. At some point, someone answered the phone with bad Hebrew and an Arab accent and said to him the word ‘kidnapped.’ "

Tracking their phones, the relatives could see the missing Haran family was in Gaza.

The family says there have been no updates from the Israeli government, who over the weekend formed a Kidnapped and Missing Persons Taskforce and reached out to the Harans for the first time to gather information. They want the Israeli government “to do whatever they can to get proof that the hostages are okay,” says Milstein.

“There's no news of the state of the hostages. And that's what we want,” she says. “We want Hamas to send us proof that they are alive and that they are safe and that they have the right conditions order to stay strong and survive until we bring them home."

Related: Daughter Reflects on Late Palestinian Father's Dream for Peace in Gaza: 'Hamas Destroyed That Dream' (Exclusive)

The older hostages have medical needs that are not being addressed, she says. "There are four adults that get daily medications, Avshalom, Shoshan, Sharon and Eviatar, and at the moment they're not getting their medications. And that's what worries us, and that's why we're trying to get whoever we can to connect with the Red Cross to try and get out of Hamas proof that they're okay."

Milstein says 117 people from the kibbutz have been killed, marking 10% of the community, with “hundreds” still missing. That number includes the Harans, whom she describes as “just the most loving, caring real family. Very genuine and very modest and humble.”

Shoshan, the founder of the NGO Fair Planet that distributes seeds across Africa to combat global hunger, and her brother were born in Be'eri; their father Avraham fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s and founded the kibbutz. In the deadliest day in Israel's history, Milstein estimates roughly half of Avraham’s descendants have been kidnapped. 

Shoshan is “really smart, funny, very very sharp,” says Milstein. Avshalom, she adds, “takes care of everyone. All he cares about is that his friends, his family, his community will be safe and have everything they need.”

A rare smile emerges when she speaks of the young children. Noam loves dancing, loves TikTok and loves his cousins. Naveh "only cares about Messi and soccer. On Saturday, all he wanted was for us to just play with him in the garden," she recalls of their last time all together. "And Yahel, she loves being outside. On that Friday night that we were with them, we had dinner and then we did a bonfire in the garden and we were just drinking tea around it and laughing and talking and playing with them."

Today the family members who remain wait, praying for updates that have not come.

“Survival, that’s where we are,” says Milstein. “If we have missions to do, we do that and then we're together and we cry and we hurt. We have a small altar that we created yesterday and we just light the candles and we pray. We try and send them as much light and as much strength and just try and imagine them all safe and together. And just send them as much support as we can.”

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