Unable to walk, talk and entirely reliant on her family to feed her through a tube, Rut Perez travelled to the Supernova festival near Gaza to “communicate through music”.
Today, a week after the Hamas terrorist attack, she has emerged as one of the most vulnerable of the 150 Israelis taken hostage by the militants.
The 17-year-old girl, who suffers from muscular dystrophy, had attended the electronic music event with her father, Eric, and sister, Yamit, who told The Times: “It was the happiest I’ve ever seen her, dancing in her wheelchair. She was so happy.”
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Yamit, 20, and her mother, Elinor, who also uses a wheelchair, gathered with hundreds of other families in Tel Aviv yesterday to be briefed by hostage negotiators on efforts to bring their relatives home.
Yamit said she had decided to leave the festival early with her friends. “Me and your sister will stay on and enjoy,” her father told her.
She does not know whether her father or sister are still alive. “I am begging Hamas to let my dad take care of her, he’s the only one who knows what she needs,” she said, rocking back and forth, her knees pressed to her chest.
Mother and daughter watched anxiously as other families were ferried into glass-walled rooms. Sounds of sudden grief rattled through the building as, one by one, they heard news that their loved ones had been killed.
Yamit made her plea on a day when:
• Israeli infantry and tanks carried out their first raids inside Gaza since last week’s attack. A military spokesman said they were targeting Palestinian rocket crews and seeking information about the location of hostages.
• Gaza is becoming a “hell hole” and is on the verge of collapse, a UN relief agency warned, as Israel told 1.1 million people in northern Gaza to leave before a ground offensive began.•
• Tens of thousands of Muslims demonstrated across the Middle East in support of the Palestinians and against Israel.
• Rishi Sunak condemned what he called a “disgusting rise” in antisemitism since the attack and warned those inciting violence that they would face “the full force of the law’’.
• Scotland Yard deployed more than 1,000 officers across London to police a pro-Palestine protest due to take place today.
• Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, said the BBC and other broadcasters should follow the “law” and describe Hamas as a terrorist organisation.
• Tzipi Hotovely, the Israeli ambassador to Britain, said in an interview with The Times that Jews were “facing things that the world hasn’t seen since the Second World War”.
Yesterday’s emotionally charged meeting in Tel Aviv was addressed by Gal Hirsch, the government’s head of negotiations. He told the families: “It is very important for me to meet you and I will meet every one of you, I will hug every one of you and I will take care of every one of you.”
Hirsch said volunteers were working day and night to manage a database of the missing and gather as much information as possible on who was still alive. The Israeli government is opening a humanitarian corridor to send aid to the kidnapped children in Gaza, he said, adding that the state of Israel was responsible for bringing the children back. “The best people in the intelligence service are working 24 hours — I’m in charge of that,” he said.
The packed room was silent, some wearing T-shirts printed with photos of their missing family. “It’s not a sprint, it’s a long journey. Win the war, return all the hostages and take care of you,” Hirsch said. “We lost the best of our daughters and children.”
Outside the meeting, another parent, Meirav Leshem Gonen, waited to hear if her 23-year-old daughter was still alive. She recounted the moment her phone rang at 10.15am last Saturday and she heard Romi’s frightened voice. “Mummy, we’ve been shot. I’m bleeding,” her daughter whispered, as she hid in her car from her attackers.
“Don’t be scared, we’re trying to get you out,” her mother told her. Gonen said she stayed on the phone with her daughter for almost an hour. “I told her that I would take her to her coffee shop, we would go hiking and do all the things she liked. I wanted to burn in her memory that she is loved.”
Just before 11am Gonen heard the sound of gunfire erupt and a man’s voice speaking in Arabic opening the car door. The family tracked Romi’s phone and found that at 2pm it was located in Gaza.
Every morning since the attack Yamit Perez visits her father’s house in the hope she will find him and her sister there. When her parents divorced and her mother struggled with her mental health, it was Rut she relied upon. “Throughout everything my little sister and I together remained strong,” she said. They would often take trips to the beach together, one of her sister’s favourite places, to get away from it all.
“I want to believe there are good people in this world and they will help us get our family back,” Yamit said. “To their captors I want to say, please, take care of them and let them come back home.”
