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Israeli hostage Naama Levy’s mom pens emotional letter on daughter’s birthday: ‘My wish is to hold you…’
Israeli hostage Naama Levy’s mother, Dr. Ayelet Levy Shachar, has penned a heartbreaking letter for her daughter’s 20th birthday.
Israeli hostage Naama Levy’s mother has penned a heartbreaking letter for her daughter’s 20th birthday. Dr. Ayelet Levy Shachar, Naama’s mother, is reportedly the team doctor for Israel’s national women's soccer team.
“This is a letter no mother should ever have to write to her daughter. Today is your 20th birthday. You should be celebrating this occasion surrounded by friends and family. Instead, you are enduring your 260th day as a hostage in Gaza surrounded by terrorists,” Ayelet wrote in a letter published by New York Post.
“Ever since your abduction, we have been working relentlessly and in every way possible to bring you home. Every day without you is a day without air. The uncertainty and dread I experience is suffocating, and each passing day that you are not with us feels like an eternity. We will not stop fighting for you until you are home,” she added.
‘It’s too much for a mother to bear’
A video of Naama’s abduction was one of the most disturbing clips that surfaced from the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel. The video showed her handcuffed, being made to get into a car to be taken to Gaza. She was seen barefoot and bloodied.
“Naama, your captors have denied medical visits from the Red Cross and other humanitarian organizations, and this has left us in complete darkness about your well-being. We know nothing. As a physician, I am tormented by the realization that the person I most want to save in this world, I cannot,” Ayelet wrote in the letter.
Naama was abducted while she was at the beginning of her service for the Israel Defense Forces, and was stationed at Kibbutz Nir Oz. Ayelet wrote that the horrific images from her abduction that surfaced are photos that she “cannot unsee.”
“Your bloodied sweatpants. Your handcuffed hands. The monster dragging you by the hair and forcing you into a car. Where that car took you and what’s happened to you since, the mind wanders down a cruel, dark path. It’s too much for a mother to bear,” she wrote.
Ayelet said that she has been looking at Naama’s photo from a previous birthday, and it “seems like a lifetime ago.” She added that hundreds of people will be gathering in Central Park to mark Naama’s birthday, wearing yellow and white headbands to pay homage to her “crown of flowers.” Ayelet said that her daughter has become a “symbol of determination” and an “image of all that is good, even when everything seems so bad.”
“Naama, on your birthday, my deepest wish is that the pain of these past months becomes just one chapter in a much bigger story – a story filled with so many bright moments that they outshine this period of darkness. My wish is for your freedom to arrive as soon as possible so that your healing can begin. My wish is to hold you just as I did for the first time on this day, 20 years ago, and to promise you that everything will be alright,” Ayelet concluded.
