Father of freed Gaza hostage says fellow Arabs should be outraged by Hamas
JERUSALEM: The father of Hisham Al-Sayed, a Bedouin Muslim returned to Israel after nearly a decade in Gaza captivity, on Sunday urged 'the Arab world' to speak out against abuses by Hamas.
Sayed, 37, was released by the Palestinian militant group on Saturday under a fragile truce in its war with Israel. The man, who is schizophrenic according to his family, had entered the Gaza Strip in 2015 and was held hostage there since.
'At the start of his captivity, when there were four hostages in Gaza, I thought that Hamas members would keep him safe, because it was in their interest' to exchange him for Palestinians in Israeli jails, said the father, Shaaban Al-Sayed.
Speaking to journalists at a hospital in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv, he said that after Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the Gaza war, 'I began to tremble with fear.'
'I saw that Bedouins and Arabs were killed, working people who weren't soldiers or fighters,' said Sayed of some of the hundreds killed during the attack.
'The Arab world doesn't react, doesn't give any response to that, doesn't take any stance,' he said.
'We want the Arab world, and particularly Arab society in Israel, to voice their opinion: What do they think about the fact that innocent people were kidnapped and murdered?'
Sayed accused Hamas of violating the teachings of Islam by exploiting his son who 'has mental problems.'
'When we got Hisham back, we were relieved to see him walking on his legs,' the father added, 'but as I held him in my arms, I realized I was hugging a body... not a human being.'
'He doesn't talk. He doesn't have a voice. He can't remember anything. It's like he hadn't been with other human beings' during his years in captivity, he said.
'This makes us angry,' added the father, calling to intensify efforts to free all remaining hostages in Gaza.
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