By Jon Donnison
BBC News, central Israel
In the garden of his home in central Israel, amid the palm trees dappled in the morning sun, Yoni Asher shows me a video on his phone.
It’s of his two small girls, sitting on a bed. They’re singing Happy Birthday.
Raz, the eldest, with long fair hair, is just four years old. Her sister Aviv, darker and more like her dad, is only two.
“They made this for my birthday in July,” Yoni tells me.
But four months on, the 37-year-old father and husband is home alone.
Along with their mother Doron, they were captured on 7 October in Hamas’s unprecedented cross border attack. They are thought to be among the youngest of the 240 hostages being held in Gaza.
“They had been visiting their grandma for the holidays in Nir Oz,” Yoni says.
The Israeli kibbutz sits only two miles from Gaza. It was one of the communities worst affected by the attack, with one in four of those who lived there believed to have been killed or kidnapped by Hamas.
Suggested reading for living in the image of the Loving and the Most Merciful God by Zia H Shah MD, Chief Editor of the Muslim Times:
Thirty Plus Quotes from the Poet of Love
Two Hundred Verses about Compassionate Living in the Quran
A Message of Compassion and Love from the Holy Bible
True Fasting: A Message of Compassion and Love from the Old Testament
Abou Ben Adhem, A Compassionate Man
‘Love Hormone,’ How it works in Hospitality?
‘Love Hormone’ Oxytocin May Enhance Feelings Of Spirituality
I am a Jew, a Catholic, a Christian and a Muslim; I am Zia H Shah
Surah Lail: Compassion and Generosity a Way to Paradise
Categories: pluralism, The Muslim Times