The wife of an Israeli hostage has written a heartbreaking open letter to her kidnapped husband, saying she misses watching her baby grow, asking: “Can I be free to watch her walk for the first time?” .
Rishei Ravi, a 38-year-old mother of two, has been living a nightmare ever since her husband Omri Milan, 46, was kidnapped from their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7th. He says he is sending it.
Now, 108 days into the Israel-Hamas war, Ravi wrote about how he and his two daughters, Loni, 2, and Alma, 5 months, are enduring without him.
“Alma started crawling right after you were taken from us,” Ravi said. “She can now sit and stand and she is trying to feed herself.
“She smiles and reaches for the space you once occupied, as if trying to grasp the memory that has slipped from her tiny fingers.
“Will we ever see her walking for the first time?”
Ravi added that Loni has also become more articulate, asking about her father every night.
“She talks about bad people who took you away right before our eyes. She paints a picture of you every day,” Ravi said. “And her smile reminds me of you.
“Her eyes look into mine for reassurance, and I try to give her the assurance she craves. But true comfort comes when you come to us. You only get it when you come back,” she pointed out.
Ravi also said he writes to Milan every day, highlighting “our pain, suffering and despair” and likening himself to the Greek epic “Penelope, Odysseus's wife, who was waiting for Odysseus's return.” He said he is doing so. Odyssey. ”
The heartbroken wife revealed to her husband that the family was now living in a shelter because their neighborhood in Nir Oz had been completely destroyed by Hamas.
The letter concludes with Rabi criticizing the international community for not doing everything possible to free the estimated 132 hostages remaining in Gaza.
“How did we get to a place where the humanitarian appeals of families are met with indifference and ridicule, where the principles that should guide us are overshadowed by political posturing?” she asked.
“Sometimes I feel that the government has also abandoned us. Although I truly believe that it is committed to freeing you and all the hostages,” she reassured Milan.
The letter was published hours before it was revealed that Israel had sent Hamas a new proposal for a truce that would halt fighting in the Gaza Strip for up to two months and an exchange of all hostages.
Under the proposed hostage deal, all captive women and men over the age of 60 who are in critical condition or have serious health problems would be released first.
Officials said the next step would be to free hostages not affiliated with the Israel Defense Forces, after which Hamas would also release the bodies of Israeli soldiers and hostages who died in captivity.
Israel estimates that about 132 hostages remain in the Gaza Strip, 27 of whom have been killed.
It remains unclear whether Hamas will accept the deal, which requires the Jewish state to refuse to release all Palestinian prisoners and end its operations in Gaza completely in exchange for the hostages, two key demands the terrorists had sought. This is because they openly deny the point.
