Family members of two released American hostages in Gaza said that they didn’t feel that they had the “privilege to celebrate,” but hoped to help more hostages, including their family members, get home.
Judith Raanan and her daughter, Natalie Raanan, were released Friday by Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, weeks after it attacked Israel, resulting in the death of over 1,300 Israelis, according to an announcement from the State Department. Their family members, Ayelet Sella and Or Sella, said they were experiencing a mixture of joy for getting some of their family back, and guilt as several others are still held hostage in Gaza, according to NBC. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Feds Warn That Hamas, Hezbollah Could Be Crossing Southern Border)
“We don’t have the privilege to celebrate,” Or Sella said. “We don’t have the privilege to even mourn our murdered family members yet because each and every day we wake up and 24 hours a day we’re just doing everything we can to get everyone back. We are 100% focused on doing everything we can to just get everyone back. Our family and 200 more families.”
Israeli soldiers search the site of the weekend attack by Palestinian militants on the Supernova Desert Music Festival, near kibbutz Reim in the Negev desert in southern Israel on October 12, 2023. (Photo by MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP via Getty Images)
The siblings said that another eight members of their family, including a 3-year-old and several dual U.S.-Israeli citizens, were still being held in captivity by Hamas, according to NBC. The U.S. and Israeli governments have estimated that Hamas has taken over 200 hostages, including several Americans, since its initial attack on Oct. 7, according to a Friday statement from Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
“We all agreed as a family, they are alive, they are well,” Or Sells said, according to NBC. “They will come back.”
The family members said that they were not sure why Hamas had decided to release Judith and Natalie, according to NBC, but a Hamas spokesperson claimed that the decision was to refute the Biden administration’s claims about Hamas’ terrorist actions.
Ayelet Sella said that her grandmother had been a survivor of the Holocaust and that Hamas’ attacks felt like their family was reliving that experience, according to NBC.
“Now we live it and it’s unimaginable,” she said. “I don’t think that any one of us can even comprehend what we are going through right now.”
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