For Ido Dan, the
horror of Saturday’s events played out on his family’s WhatsApp group.

His cousin,
Hadas, who lives in Nir Oz, a kibbutz next to Gaza, had been updating her
family from within an air raid shelter. Earlier that morning, she had
written that she could hear gunmen shouting in Arabic.

“Something scary
is going on here,” she told the group, describing the screaming of other
kibbutz members.

She said it was
“like a Holocaust here – they are killing everyone,” says Ido.

“And then
at 9am she got disconnected. Her battery ran out.”

Hadas did survive
– by wedging the door of her hideout closed.

But by nightfall it was
clear that five members of the family were missing from their homes in the
kibbutz. Two of Hadas’s children and her ex-husband – their father, as
well as her niece and her 80-year-old mother, Ido’s aunt, Carmella.

Later a
disturbing video surfaced on social media. It appeared to show Erez,
Hadas’s 12-year-old son being taken by gunmen into Gaza.

“There is hope to believe they’re alive,” says Ido, who lives near Tel Aviv. But he is deeply fearful for what might happen next.

With reports of hostage negotiations being brokered by Qatar, Ido has a message for Hamas about his family:

“Just get them out of this confrontation, it’s not for kids, it’s not for older people,” he says.

“Even war has rules and ethics and limits.”