Families say return of hostages should come before destroying Hamas

Hagar Brodutch is haunted by many memories of her 51 days in Hamas captivity, but teaching her children to cry without making a sound is the most searing.

HERZLIYA, Israel — Hagar Brodutch is haunted by many memories of her 51 days in Hamas captivity, but teaching her children to cry without making a sound is the most searing.

“It’s impossible for 4-year-olds to cry silently,” she told NBC News, speaking of her son Uriah, and her then 3-year-old neighbor Avigail Idan, whose parents were murdered in front of her, and whom Brodutch cared for along with her other children, Ofri, 10, and Yuval, 8.

Hagar Brodutch.Hostages and Missing Families Forum headquarters via APBrodutch, 40, says her captors, a Palestinian family with 10 children in Gaza, were afraid neighbors or Israeli forces would be alerted that hostages were inside their house. Still, despite her family’s life-altering experience, she and her husband, Avihai, 42, say that the return of the remaining 134 hostages should take priority in the war.

That sentiment from Brodutch, of the hard-hit Kfar Aza kibbutz, and dozens of other returned hostages and their families interviewed by NBC News appears to be gaining traction among some of the Israeli leaders directing the war.

In comments broadcast late Thursday, a member of Israel’s war Cabinet for the first time said publicly that the release of hostages should take precedence.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-hostage-families-immediate-return-hamas134-rcna134661

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