A video posted by the Hostage and Missing Families Forum on Thursday showed a sign of life from Maxim Herkin and Bar Kuperstein, who were abducted from the Nova music festival during the massacre on Oct. Hamas posted a video of the two in May but their families asked for parts of the videos to be kept from public view, until Thursday.
"We are dead with a pulse, we do not feel human," the hostages said. "We are again 30 meters underground."
Maxim Herkin and Bar Kuperstein
(Hostage and Missing Families Forum)
Other captives pleading to be freed are also in the forum's clip.
The families of hostages called for the government to return all of the captives held in Gaza for nearly two years, in one deal and prevent the cruel need to select who among them would come home and who would be left behind.
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"This clip hopes to make the cry of the families of hostages heard, as a possible deal is being negotiated that would involve a cruel selection and separation based on blood," the forum said in a statement. "All 50 hostages are humanitarian cases, those who are in danger of death and those who may disappear forever."
The forum demanded that all hostages be included in the deal. "That is the proper and moral thing to do and would not demand separating brothers and choosing one hostage at the expense of another."
"Even animals cannot survive in such conditions," said Barak Oz, Kuperstein's cousin, after the clip was released. "They must all be returned."