The father of an American man talked to News4JAX about his son’s experience as a hostage taken by Hamas terrorists during the October attack.
It’s been eight months since 35-year-old Sagui Dekel Chen, a father of three, was kidnapped. He is believed to have engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the terrorists and then kidnapped from his home in the Nir Oz Kibbutz while his wife and children hid in a safe room.
His father, Jonathan Dekel-Chen said 40 of the 79 people kidnapped from his Kibbutz were released in the first hostage deal in late November. Some of those released hostages spoke with him.
“They saw my son and many other people from our Kibbutz who were taken hostage. They told us that as of late November and early December, he and others were alive. In Sagui’s case, he was wounded,” Dekel-Chen said.
Last week, four hostages were rescued during an Israeli military operation that, according to Hamas, killed more than 200 Palestinians.
Dekel-Chen described the rescue as a complicated issue.
“I was overjoyed as was the country overjoyed by the release of these four young people. We can only hope that the rest of the 121 families of the hostages will have similar moments,” he said. “As far as the loss of Palestinian life is concerned, all of this could end in an hour if Hamas were to release the remaining 121 hostages. This all began on October 7th invaded Israel, murdered 1,200 people; most all of them civilians, conducted mass rape, mass looting, and mass hostage-taking.”
Dekel-Chen spoke to President Joe Biden on Zoom and in person. He praised Congress and the Biden Administration’s support but said there is one thing we should never lose sight of.
“We must not allow the issue of the hostages or the war in general to become politicized in what is a highly intense election year. This has to remain above politics from all sides; a humanitarian issue and one of justice but not one of politics,” Dekel-Chen said.
Dekel-Chen said he later learned that three of the hostages who were killed in the tunnels below Gaza were his neighbors and two of them were close friends.