When she talks about when she was a hostage, Hagar Brodutch just says ‘when we were there’—as if she and her family were visiting some far-away place, or distant cousins, a long time ago. But, in reality, ‘when we were there’ is a family shorthand for the unimaginable—the 51 days that she, her three young children and a neighbour’s child were held starving and terrified, kidnapped from their home on Kibbutz Kfar Aza by Hamas on Oct. 7.
“I always felt safe because this is how I grew up. I always believed everything was going to be OK,” the 41-year-old mother said in an interview with The CJN. “Even when we lived in Kfar Aza, lots of people said it was a nightmare what happened on Oct.
7. But for me, it wasn’t my nightmare. I never believed that something like that could happen.
“I was very confident, but now I don’t believe in anybody, I don’t trust in anybody...
I know that it will take time and that I need to recover and I need my family to recover.” My sister in law Hagar, my niece Ofri and my two nephews Yuval and Uriah were kidnapped into Gaza. We want them home where they belong.
#BringThemHowNow pic.twitter.com/pMDZquu0ml — Aharon Brodutch (@ABrodutch) October 19, 2023 Part of the recovery involved a trip to Toronto, where her brother-in-law and his family lives.
For a few weeks, the family are staying in a home in a leafy neighbourhood, where the kids are playing Minecraft with their cousins, and planning the usual tourist outings to Rip.
