‘I don’t have time to mourn my mother’s murder, because I have to save my children’s lives’

Family members of children kidnapped by Hamas want the Israeli government to suspend all military action until it has secured the release of the hostages.

“I can hear my son screaming to me every night: ‘Mom, bring me home, save me!’” cried Hadas Kalderon at an emotional press conference held by family members of children who were kidnapped from their homes and being held hostage by Hamas.

Kalderon called on the Israeli government to “suspend all military action” until it had secured the release of the hostages.

“Two days ago, we celebrated my mother’s 80th birthday without her. She was a wonderful woman. We don’t know where or when she and my niece were murdered. I don’t have time to mourn her because I have to work to save my children’s lives right now,” she said, trembling in front of international media assembled at Tel Aviv’s Carlton Hotel.

The bodies of Carmela Dann, 8 and Noya Dann, 12, who were previously believed to be held hostage, were found nearly two weeks after their murder by Hamas terrorists.

Kalderon’s son, Erez, and daughter, Sahar, were snatched from Kibbutz Nir Oz during the bloody incursion that Kalderon survived in her own kibbutz home, hiding from terrorists for eight hours as she heard the Hamas terrorists rampage around her and “sending goodbye messages from my phone to my family.”

“Our kibbutz suffered an awful massacre, a pogrom, a horrible hell. Our kibbutz has disappeared. They went house by house, murdering, butchering and then they burned the houses. And now we don’t have homes to go back to. But I don’t care. I don’t care about my house, my stuff, my garden, my clothes. I only care about one thing. We have to release the children,” she said.

Four hostages, two elderly women and two US citizens, have been released in the past week. There are now believed to be 210 hostages, including 30 children.

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'I don't have time to mourn my mother's murder, because I have to save my children's lives’ (Haaretz)  

Photo: Hadas Kalderon weeps at a press conference held by parents of kidnapped children (Allison Kaplan Sommer)