Friends and relatives say Hamas killed a grandmother, parents protecting their children, and an entire family during raids

Friends and relatives say Hamas killed a grandmother, parents protecting their children, and an entire family during raids

A little after 11pm on Sunday, the Israeli government posted a photograph of a family on one of its social media accounts. There were five people in the selfie: a mother, a father and their three young children, all of them smiling.

“Tamar, Yonatan and their children Shachar, Arbel, Omer,” the caption read. “An entire family wiped out by Hamas terrorists. There are no words. May their memory be a blessing.”

Moments later, the former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett reposted the photo.

“An entire family murdered in cold blood,” he wrote. “Look at their happy faces. Their love. All of them murdered by Palestinian terrorists at Nir Oz kibbutz. Just because they’re Jews.”

Although it remains unclear exactly what happened to the Kedem family on their kibbutz, which lies a mile and a half from the border with Gaza, their picture – and the story of their murders – has been widely shared to illustrate the utter pitilessness and ferocity of Hamas’s attack on Israel.

According to friends in Australia, the family rushed to their safe room when the assaults began, from where they sent a WhatsApp message.

“Hi guys, we got into the shelter in our house, we’re all going okay,” the text read.

An hour later, however, Tamar had stopped responding to messages from Yishai and Mor Lacob, her friends in Sydney.

    • avater@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5625·
      9 months ago

      what the fuck has your comment to do with the article?

      We all knew that there are also people dying in Palestine due to military operations conducted by Israel, but your whataboutism does not justify the killing of civilians by terrorists…

    • danielbln@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4230·
      9 months ago

      I remember those videos of IDF soldiers pulling raped dead women through the streets of Telaviv while people cheered and spat on the bodies. Oh wait, I don’t.

      • NOT_RICK@lemmy.worldEnglish
        105·
        9 months ago

        You’re right, both sides of this conflict have their own flavors of atrocities

        • TylerDurdenJunior@lemmy.mlEnglish
          135·
          9 months ago

          One side just happens to be a supposed democracy with one of the most advanced armies in the world with the most destructive and deadly capabilities with endless funding.

          It’s two sides. But not even sides. Not even close.

          One side holds 100 hostages and shoots home made rockets into a wasteland.

          The other side holds 2.3 million hostages, and bombs civilians in one of the most densely populated area in the world.

          It’s two sides. But not even sides. Not even close

          • NOT_RICK@lemmy.worldEnglish
            73·
            9 months ago

            I never claimed they have symmetric capabilities and I agree that Israel holds a significantly higher burden to avoid civilian casualties due to their capability, but that doesn’t change the fact that Hamas intentionally commits atrocities. The IRA spent 30 years bombing British troops and sometimes civilians in their aim for a United Ireland and got nowhere. Hamas has only achieved the perpetuation of the suffering in Gaza and potentially the prevention of a more moderate (Saudi funded) political alternative in Gaza. I genuinely think the Saudi Israeli rapprochement is what this is all about.

            • spiderplant@lemm.eeEnglish
              3·
              9 months ago

              Hate to break it to you, the OG IRA used violence and got most of the country in 1921. Republican groups used violence in the north in the late 60s to 70s and it improved the very real injustices facing Catholics at the time.

              Violence has always been needed to change things in a meaningful way.

              • NOT_RICK@lemmy.worldEnglish
                2·
                9 months ago

                I’m aware of Ireland’s independence war. I don’t find the original IRA to be a comparable situation, they had wide popular support in Ireland with the exception of the north for obvious reasons. I find the Provisional IRA hardened the views of Protestants that could have otherwise been convinced that the land ownership voting system was unjust. I don’t see how their role in escalating violence in that turned Belfast and Derry into war zones helped anyone. Not everything needs a bloody revolution, political solutions do sometimes work and I think the Good Friday agreement is a good example of that.

                • spiderplant@lemm.eeEnglish
                  1·
                  9 months ago

                  Hate to break it to you again but peaceful methods didn’t work at the start of the troubles and protestant view were already hardened. It took a lot of violence to get to a point where things changed. You can argue that political solution and peace could have happened before 98 but as for a lot of civil rights movements violence started to get things moving to a point where the oppressor has to engage in more peaceful ways.

      • NeuronautML@lemmy.mlEnglish
        86·
        9 months ago

        Every Israeli is mandated by law to serve IDF.

        Not every Palestinian serves the Hamas.

        That’s the difference.

    • WidowsFavoriteSon@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1528·
      9 months ago

      Housing blocks where war supplies or combatants were hiding. And only after giving warning and time for people to leave the building.

      If Palestinians didn’t want their children killed, they shouldn’t have hidden behind them.

  • JiveTurkey@lemmy.worldEnglish
    178·
    9 months ago

    If you’re going to treat them like animals, they’re going to act like animals.

  • zephyreks@lemmy.mlEnglish
    73·
    9 months ago

    Maybe living within earshot of a concentration camp wasn’t the best idea, huh?

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    42·
    9 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    Although it remains unclear exactly what happened to the Kedem family on their kibbutz, which lies a mile and a half from the border with Gaza, their picture – and the story of their murders – has been widely shared to illustrate the utter pitilessness and ferocity of Hamas’s attack on Israel.

    Mor Lacob said her friend Tamar, a women’s rights activist and community leader, would be remembered for her kindness and sense of social justice.

    On Sunday morning, a volunteer at Nir Oz, a community of about 400 people, said residents had woken to “a kibbutz in flames” and were “still passing around checking damages and trying to figure out who is where”.

    Relatives of an as-yet-unnamed woman said their grandmother had been murdered by the militants, who then filmed her dying moments and posted them on her Facebook page.

    Another of the woman’s grandchildren, Yoav Shimoni, who had visited her on the kibbutz two weeks earlier to celebrate Rosh Hashanah, said the family believed she had been targeted because of her house’s proximity to the border fence.

    “Itay and Hadar were brutally murdered after fighting bravely against the terrorists,” according to Gali Dagan, Israel’s ambassador to Colombia.

    The original article contains 835 words, the summary contains 199 words. Saved 76%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • blazera@kbin.social
    1417·
    9 months ago

    Why would you bring a family there in the first place? Your country is committing military occupation there.

    • tra@lemm.eeEnglish
      116·
      9 months ago

      The kibutzim around gaza are not on occupied land. The west bank and gaza are not the same place.