When they called their mother, Hamas answered the phone
- Published
Ditza Heiman is being held hostage in Gaza
Nearly four weeks have passed since Hamas kidnapped about 240 people into Gaza - among them is 84-year-old Ditza Heiman.
When Ditza's daughter called her on 7 October, Hamas answered the phone.
"They were shouting 'It's Hamas, it's Hamas'," another daughter, Neta Heiman Mina, told the BBC.
"My sister was terrified, she hung up. I didn't think they had taken her. I thought they had killed her."
Ditza Heiman is being held hostage in Gaza.
She was taken from Kibbutz Nir Oz when Hamas staged its deadly attack on Israel, killing 1,400 people and taking more than 240 hostage.
Neta says she was in touch with her mother in the morning. Ditza was in her safe room and didn't know what was happening outside.
"I don't think she realised, or we realised, that the terrorists were at the kibbutz," Neta said.
The last message she got from her mother was a few minutes before 10:00 local time. After that she didn't answer her phone.
Neta later spoke to one of her mother's neighbours, who told her that Ditza had been calling for help. He went out to see what was happening and saw her being taken away by Hamas gunmen.
"There were too many terrorists outside, they started shooting. He crawled back into his shelter. He was lucky," Neta said.
On a Hamas Facebook page, Neta and her sister found a video that showed her mother. "They took her. They put her in a car. When we found the video, we knew she was alive."
Ditza Heiman had lived all her adult life in Nir Oz. A social worker who had only stopped working a few years ago, she has 12 grandchildren, five great-grandchildren and "so many more children who grew up with her and consider her to be family".
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Neta Heiman Mina at an installation to highlight the plight of hostages
Neta's voice is unwavering as she talks about her mother. She lived on her own, she cooked for herself, she walked places.
"But she walked slowly. I don't think she could walk for many kilometres, like Yocheved," Neta said, referring to 85-year-old Yocheved Lifschitz who was freed last month and who has spoken of having to walk in the tunnels.
Ms Lifschitz described being taken into a "spider's web" of tunnels underneath Gaza.
Neta is very worried about the ground offensive in Gaza. She doesn't know what it means for the hostages, and she is also concerned for the young soldiers.
"They are all friends of my children, they are children of my friends. I don't think it will bring the hostages back," she said.
She wants Israel's government to "talk directly to Hamas".
A long-time activist with Women Wage Peace, the largest Israeli grassroots peace movement made up of Jewish and Arab women, she has long campaigned for an agreement-based resolution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
She also blames Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government for what has happened.
"In the last nine months they did everything to escalate the situation, especially in the West Bank," she said.
She says that Hamas attacked at a time when many Israeli troops had been stationed in the occupied West Bank.
"The army was there [in the West Bank], to protect the Sukkah [a shelter put up as part of a Jewish festival]." she says, referring to tensions in the flashpoint town of Huwara.
"They were there and they didn't protect my mother. And now they need to do everything to bring them [the hostages] back."