There’s a large wall in Miami Beach which has pictures of the hostages on it. A year after Hamas abducted them from Israel and brought them into Gaza, 101 of them are still languishing there. Many others have died in captivity, either murdered by Hamas or, in one tragic incident, killed by friendly fire.
Alon Shamriz was one of three hostages who escaped together, but were shot dead by an IDF sniper who assumed they were part of a Hamas ambush attempt.
“It’s not something that you can move on from, it’s something that will stay with you forever and you just learn how to deal with it better,” said Oded Eshel, who is first cousins with Shamriz.
Eshel lives in Fort Lauderdale, but had many relatives who lived in Kfar Aza, one of the towns ransacked by Hamas on its killing spree on October 7th. Terrorists pulled Shamriz out of his bullet-riddled saferoom. He and two companions survived two months of torture, being held in the tunnels of Gaza, before fighting their way out.
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“And then survives five days above ground, trying to get the IDF to rescue them, and then he does everything in his power to show he’s not a threat, and he’s still taken out by one of his own, it’s unbelievably tragic,” Eshel said.
He was asked what the past twelve months have been like for him and his family.
“For me it’s been the worst year of my life, you get touched by this unimaginable tragedy, which lots of people experienced, but then to also see how many millions of people around the world celebrated that, has been so hurtful, deeply, deeply painful,” Eshel explained.
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Eshel, who is married to NBC6 reporter Marissa Bagg, says one incident illustrates that feeling of being abandoned by society.
“One of the lowest moments for me in the past year was the day before I flew to Israel to go see my family after my cousin was killed, I was in the downtown Fort Lauderdale with my wife and we walked by all these hostage posters that had been put up and torn down, pictures of children being held hostage by Hamas were torn down by my neighbors,” said Eshel.
What drives people to support terror groups? What drives people to commit mass murder? Eshel says he’s spent a year educating himself on the Palestinian perspective, looking for avenues for coexistence. But seeing how Hamas brutalized a community of peace activists, his outlook is pessimistic.
“Hamas is committed to destroying the Jewish people, that’s their political aim, and you can’t meet in the middle on something like that, unfortunately,” he said.
Eshel often wears a “Bring Them Home” dog tag and sometimes, a shirt bearing his cousin’s name.
“And I will think about him every day for the rest of my life,” Eshel said.
To honor his cousin, Eshel and his family back in Israel are still working to free the remaining hostages, hoping they have the reunions with their loved ones that Alon Shamriz never had.
