By Kate Holton
LONDON (Reuters) – Without any news on the fate of his mother, Noam Sagi has been left looking for clues in the online videos that show Hamas militants celebrating as they raided the kibbutz where the 75-year-old woman lived.
Ada Sagi has been missing since Saturday after she told her son Noam, who lives in London, that she was going into a safe room as Islamist Hamas gunmen rampaged through towns and into her kibbutz in the deadliest Palestinian militant attack in Israel’s history.
“She’s the most loving, caring, peace-seeking, justice-seeking human being,” he told Reuters of the grandmother of six. “She became an Arabic teacher and Hebrew teacher. Her main vision was that communication is the key for coexistence.”
Sitting in his kitchen in north London, Noam Sagi, 53, said his one hope was that when the militants come face-to-face with those they have taken they will see them not as a Jew or an Israeli, but as humans.
“I know for sure that the people who did this are humans. They have hearts, they have brains. They have wishes and they have disappointments, like all of us. I just hope that they will realise that you can’t prioritise yours over anyone else,” he said. “I have a strong belief in humanity.”
Noam Sagi, who was born in Kibbutz Nir Oz where his mother lived for 57 of her 75 years, moved to London and trained as a psychotherapist, working with organisations and leaders to help change the way they see the world.
He is struggling now to comprehend the magnitude of the attacks and what it says about any supposed rules of combat, with elderly people and babies taken away on golf carts and motorbikes.
Israel has vowed to take “mighty revenge”. Hamas has vowed to execute a captive for each home hit without warning.
Noam’s message is that “old keys never opened new doors” – that the conflict will play out as it always has, and while he understands the pain of those who carried out the attacks, he says the assault will change nothing.
“It takes the whole conversation into an area of escalation, more blood, more years and generations of suffering. I cannot see for the life of me how that would help anyone,” he said.
(Reporting by Kate Holton; Editing by Howard Goller)
