The father of two men among more than 250 people abducted by the genocidal jihadist group Hamas on October 7 told the Argentine newspaper Clarín in an interview published Tuesday that he fears for his children’s lives as Hamas currently appears to only be negotiating for women and children.
Itzik Horn’s sons Iair and Eitan Horn — 45 and 34 years old, respectively — are among the 76 civilians Hamas terrorists took captive from Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7. The community of about 400 lost more than a quarter of its population to murder or abduction that day.
The Horns are also among the estimated 21 Argentines that Hamas took hostage during the attack. Argentina is home to Latin America’s largest Jewish population and many Argentine Jews, such as the Horns, have chosen to resettle in Israel. The youngest known Hamas hostage still in terrorist control, ten-month-old Kfir Bibas, and his family are Argentines. Bibas is reportedly in the hands of a separate terrorist group and no longer directly under Hamas, complicating efforts to free him. Hamas terrorists claimed, without providing evidence, on Wednesday that Bibas is dead.
Hamas, a radical Islamist terrorist group whose objective is the eradication of Israel and Jews generally, executed an unprecedented assault on the country on October 7 that it has triumphantly named the “al-Aqsa flood,” in which terrorists killed an estimated 1,200 civilians, many of them as young as infants, and engaged in gang rape, torture, and other atrocities. About 250 people were abducted — Hamas terrorists filmed themselves grabbing and hauling people on motorcycles on several occasions — and many brutalized in their own homes, as the terrorists went into communities such as Nir Oz and went door-to-door raping, torturing, and killing people. At a music festival, the terrorists killed about 250 people by opening fire on crowds, into outdoor toilets, and other public facilities.
Israel declared war on Hamas on October 8 and launched a military operation into Gaza, Hamas’s stronghold, to prevent a similar terrorist attack from occurring. As a result of pressure from the United States and others, Israel has begun negotiating with Hamas to secure the release of hostages. All those released so far are women and children. The last round of hostages released at press time, on Tuesday, included five residents of Nir Oz. Two of those released are women whose husbands remain in Hamas control.
People walk past an image of 4-year-old Abigail Edan, a hostage held by Hamas who was released, projected onto a building in Tel Aviv, Sunday, November 26, 2023. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
“Over one quarter of the Nir Oz community was abducted or murdered during the horrific attack on October 7th. A third of all the hostages abducted from Israel are from our community. We demand the immediate release of every single person abducted that day,” the community of Nir Oz said in a statement on Tuesday. “The Nir Oz community will continue the fight until the last hostage is returned.”
“I have a double sensation: on the one hand, happiness because they are freeing hostages; on the other, the desolation of not knowing when it will be your [loved ones’] turn,” Iair and Eitan Horn’s father Itzik told Clarín. “At least they are alive.”
Horn said that other Nir Oz residents who had been freed told him they had seen his sons and that they were well, relative to the situation. Iair is a resident of the kibbutz, while Eitan was merely there that day visiting.
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“When the Hamas attack happened, I found out they were not at the kibbutz, they weren’t anywhere. They were not dead, not hiding, not in any hospital,” he recalled, noting that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) ultimately confirmed their abduction. “And last Friday, when the first contingent of the freed were released, they told us that they had seen them and they were well.”
Horn lamented, however, that he had no way of knowing if his sons would be part of any negotiation.
“I speak to you now and there is no timeline to begin talking about the liberation of the men,” he observed.
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“Twelve of the hostages who were freed on the first day were from Nir Oz, where Iair and Eitan were where the Hamas attack happened,” Horn told Clarín. “They devastated that kibbutz, because there are about 75 abducted who are there, plus the ones who were killed, it was a community of 400 people. It was a tremendous blow to all.”
“Now we have to wait for this first stage to finish so that they start letting the men go,” Horn added. “There are still women and children, so when they are done freeing them.”
Negotiations that have led to the releases so far have occurred between Hamas, Israeli officials, the United States, and the government of Islamist Qatar, which hosts a lavish Hamas “political office” in Doha. According to the Washington Post, the negotiators split the hostages into five categories, ranging in the value that the terrorists placed on their lives: “men too old for reserve military duty, female soldiers, male reservists, active-duty male soldiers, and the bodies of Israelis who died before or during captivity.”
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Horn said that communications with the government of outgoing socialist Argentine President Alberto Fernández were initially “difficult, but then the Argentine government took an important turn.” He noted that Fernández himself held Zoom meetings with the loved ones of the Argentine captives and that the embassy in Israel had ultimately become more actively in supporting the families.
The Argentine government has not taken an active role in supporting Israel in the nearly two months since October 7. That is expected to change on December 10, when Fernández’s term ends and President-elect Javier Milei is inaugurated into office. Milei is a vocal supporter of Israel, waving the Israeli flag at campaign rallies, and is reportedly contemplating a conversion to Judaism. Milei visited the Ohel, a Jewish holy site in New York, on Monday as his first stop on a brief trip to the United States.
Horn told Clarín that it was “ridiculous” to suggest that his decades living in Israel had eroded his Argentine identity, or that of the other Argentines in Israel, including the hostages.
“I lived almost my entire life in Argentine and the kids left between the ages of 16 and 2022. There are Argentines all over the world, many went to Spain, some to the United States or Israel,” he told the newspaper. “Nobody stops being Argentine because they live in Israel or the United States.”
He noted that one of the captives released on Monday, a small Argentine girl, “when they freed her they asked her what she wanted to eat. You know what she said? Empanadas. They went out to get empanadas at 4 in the morning. We are all Argentines.”