Family Fears for Beloved Grandparents Tami and Yoram Metzger

Yoram, 80, and Tami, 78, were abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz and are being held hostage in the Gaza Strip. Both require lifesaving medications. Their daughter-in-law Ayala Metzger speaks with The Media Line about the horrors that took place in the kibbutz on the morning of Oct. 7 and about the family’s anxiety about their loved ones.

The Media Line: Ayala, thank you for speaking with me. Let’s start with the basic things for the camera: your names, names of family, the connection between you and the missing people.

Ayala Metzger: OK, so my name is Ayala Metzger. I’m married to Ran Metzger, the second son of two hostages who are currently missing. I was a member of Kibbutz Nir Oz, we were members of Kibbutz Nir Oz until 2005. I know most of the community. I have three kids. We live in a moshav next to Ashkelon. And that’s it, we have one brother who lives in Nir Oz, two siblings who don’t anymore. We’re next to Ashkelon and the second brother too, farther north. That’s it.

And my daughter went on Friday to visit Grandpa and Grandma and the cousins and stayed over with her uncle. At 6:30 in the morning, there were sirens. We went into the safe room where we were too. And we checked with them on WhatsApp, how they are. She said that they were in the safe room. Grandpa and Grandma also said, promised, that they were in the safe room. They didn’t always go in. And around 8 she already let me know that she was asking not to call, just to be in contact on WhatsApp because there is a fear of terrorist infiltration. At 8:30, I already wasn’t in contact with Grandpa and Grandma. They weren’t answering me. I sent them a message at 8:30 and they already weren’t answering me.

At 9:30 my daughter wrote to me asking that I get in contact with her sister because she was texting with her sister, and she wasn’t managing to text everyone. They are in the safe room under the bed with the two cousins and are in contact with us via two phones while the parents are holding the door. There are terrorists outside and when she trembles it’s difficult for her to write and for me to be in contact with her sister.

TML: How old is she?

Ayala Metzger: Nineteen.

TML: Let’s go back a bit. Why did you leave Nir Oz in 2005?

Ayala Metzger: We wanted some air. We had a bit of social disagreement, social difficulty. The children didn’t have company. There wasn’t yet a big community of sons who had returned to the kibbutz. There was a very small group of girls who grew up on the kibbutz. There were difficulties with work. We needed to get out of the collectivism.

TML: So it wasn’t connected to …

Ayala Metzger: It wasn’t connected at all. No, no, no. It happened at the same time, but it wasn’t connected at all to the disengagement, leaving Gaza. We laughed that the rockets were chasing us. The rockets started in Nir Oz in the fields, and we laughed that they were chasing us, because when we left we went in the direction of Ofakim and rockets started in Netivot. And then we moved north, and the Second Lebanon War started, the rockets started there as well. But no, I was never afraid of that. There was never fear about the rockets. I felt protected, I felt that the State of Israel was protecting me.

TML: So again, what are the names and ages of the hostages?

Ayala Metzger: Of the hostages? Tami Metzger, grandma, aged 78, and Yoram Metzger, 80, celebrated his birthday a month and a half ago. That’s it.

TML: Have you heard what happened to them, more specifics?

Ayala Metzger: We have some specifics. First of all, the army showed up and said that they tracked the phones and they were in Gaza. There was no video, no message beyond that. Their house doesn’t look … they didn’t destroy anything there; they also didn’t steal anything there. They knocked over things a bit, but not … so they just went missing. And now from the girls who returned, who were freed, we understood that they saw them alive there. More than that we don’t know.

TML: When was the last contact with Tami and Yoram?

Ayala Metzger: 8:30, 8 in the morning on Saturday. My daughter was in touch with them and asked them to enter the safe room and to look after themselves. And they promised her that’s what they were doing. At 8:30 I already wasn’t receiving a response from them. I sent them a message, how are [you], to check how they were, nothing.

TML: So the message that they were in the safe room was the last thing they said?

Ayala Metzger: Yes. Yes. That’s it, we waited for Sunday, that someone would actually go to their house and check. On Sunday the army still had the area of the kibbutz closed and it wasn’t possible to walk around and to see what was happening there. So until Sunday there was an expectation that maybe someone would see something. Then there was an expectation for identification of bodies. Maybe at this stage outside of the kibbutz something will be found already. And we have knowledge that apparently, they were seen alive in Gaza. Beyond that I have no idea what’s happening to them. Both are very old, sick people. He is sick with diabetes. He broke his hip half a year ago. He’s still rehabilitating now. It’s still hard for him to walk. Yes, and Tami too. She has many, many, many medicines.

TML: Tell me a bit about them. What did they do in their lives? What do they like to do now?

Ayala Metzger: Tami worked a lot on the kibbutz, in many different roles on the kibbutz. In education, at the commune, which was folding laundry and distribution. At the kolbo, the kibbutz store. She would bring clothes, make sure everyone had the supplies that were needed.

Yoram was a manager at the factory, Nirlat factory. At a certain point, they also went as emissaries from the factory to Holland and he managed a factory there in Holland. And that’s it. Now, as pensioners and Grandpa and Grandma, the grandchildren come to them often. Us too, of course. Both of them, him in particular, he really likes to cook. As a pensioner, he worked in the garage. He would make them breakfast with faces and smiles and salads, spoiling them a lot. He also did a bit of paperwork. Mainly he would go to see people for a few hours and come back home. Tami liked that less. She liked being at home, reading a book, doing crosswords, watching series on Viva, and being in touch with the grandkids.

(R-L) Yoram and Tami Metzger, with granddaughter Ofir Metzger. (Courtesy Ayala Metzger)

TML: Of course, the whole world right now is watching what’s happening here. What do you want the international community to understand that hasn’t yet made it to them?

Ayala Metzger: I want them to understand that there was a massacre here in every sense of the word. A massacre. Very much so. And not by coincidence. There was planning. It seems they planned; they even knew which houses to enter. And that’s the sense of the people on the kibbutz, and how much, where there are children, where there are old people. It’s not clear to me to which … there’s not any level of morality there that I can trust and that really, really hurts. On the opposing side.

The population of Nir Oz, myself among them, are people seeking peace. People who want, who always wanted, thought about, the benefit of the other side and wanted them to live, live well, also on the other side. And someone, someone allowed for this great evil to take control, in my opinion, also over the population there. But it arrived on our doorstep. And there was an awful, awful, awful, awful massacre here. How we get up from something like this I don’t know. Really. They murdered children, adults, indiscriminately. There was very much a war crime here in every sense of the word. Some of them … Yoram is the son of a family of Holocaust survivors. His whole family passed away in the Holocaust. The whole family.

You can’t make sense of it. Where was the state? Where were the rest of the factors in the world, the Western world that so much contains radical Islam? Where are we, the liberals, myself included, to know how to put a boundary and not to allow this thing to make us rotten and to harm us? And it has harmed us, it’s harmed us a lot. Trust has been harmed. I don’t know if they will, some of the people who have themselves been hurt, if they will manage to return to this place. If they will be capable of returning to this place. And everyone really loves it, it’s one of the more beautiful places in the Gaza envelope, Kibbutz Nir Oz. Really. A small community, full of love, full of connection between people. And a very, very beautiful place. And I don’t know who will manage to return there. A basic trust has been broken. We don’t know. Over the course of 15 years, they promised that everything is OK, and being dealt with, and they’re taking care of it, and taking care of it, and we’ve gotten to this extreme that can’t be conceptualized, can’t be conceptualized. People aren’t conceptualizing it at all.

TML: Were there workers from Gaza on Nir Oz?

Ayala Metzger: In the past there were workers from Gaza. Listen, I live in Ashkelon, next to Ashkelon. Every Sunday the stations are full of workers from Gaza. Every Sunday. During the last two weeks of September, I went with my daughter to the bus, she had to go to a pre-army academy to study. She was the only one at the station, together with many, many, many Gazan workers, men, standing at the stations. Now, also in Nir Oz there were workers. In the past, I don’t know what there is today. But these were workers that we knew had passed some sort of state security investigation, and there’s approval. We’re not security workers, that’s not my profession. It’s not the profession of people who live on the kibbutz. They’re farmers, some of them. And there are people who need their work to do.

TML: Before 2005, when you lived in Nir Oz, would you go to Gaza?

Ayala Metzger: No, I didn’t get to. When my husband was young, yes, they would enter Gaza. There were good relations with Gaza. They would buy from their market; they would go to the beach there. There wasn’t yet, as far as it seems, a Hamas government that hated Israel. There was some sort of connection. Israel was there, ruled there. I don’t know exactly what there was, how it was organized. But it was reasonable, there was a connection. And I remember workers from Gaza on the kibbutz, that we took care of them, and they went around the kibbutz as part of the permanent workforce. People who very much ate at the dining hall, knew us. And the connection was good. They received supplies from us, we took care of them. When there were wars there was even a connection over the phone. And I know from my brother on the kibbutz that he also took care of ambulances for them when it was needed. That’s it.

TML: So the residents of Nir Oz and even you, you were once really in favor of peace?

Ayala Metzger: Totally in favor of peace.

TML: Now?

Ayala Metzger: I don’t know what my stances are. I know that evil took over here. And there is, and we need to have a war against this evil. And it’s not about Arabs, not about Jews. I’ve discovered among Jews, too, there is, there can be … so it’s not about sect, it’s not about … it’s just, there is some sort of evil here that we have to take control over and stop. And not to stop, not to flounder. To stop it. Because I figure that their population, too, in one form or another, is harmed. I see their refugees, I understand that they too are harmed by this. But guys, if they succeeded in 13 years to create—less, in Nir Oz from the 1960s, they founded Kibbutz Nir Oz in the 1960s—in those years, to found such a pearl, why can’t they found something like that too? There are people who want to live and who sanctify life and there are people who sanctify death. Those who sanctify death should be eliminated. Eliminated. That’s all.

TML: As a community, as humans, what do you need now?

Ayala Metzger: I don’t know right now. Right now, the situation is that there is a hodgepodge of people who are still processing what they went through. They are still hearing the stories, trying to understand. They are still at funerals. It hasn’t ended. All the bodies haven’t been identified. We need, first of all, for the hostages to be returned home. We have 70-something people, from babies to very elderly people, 85 years old, the oldest is 85. I don’t know where they are. We want to know where they are. Seventy people, 75 people. From Nir Oz. We started with a list of 80, we’ve already buried some of them since then who were apparently found in some form or another. So we’re standing at 75 people, children, girls my age, my friends, gone missing, over there. I don’t know what’s happening to them. I don’t want to even start to know, to think what’s happening there to 16-year-old girls and 30-year-old women. It scares me. Children. Babies. A mother who held, who ended up a hostage with two babies in her arms. If they’re capable of a massacre like this on the kibbutz and didn’t discriminate, what are they capable of doing to them there? And it’s clear to me that everything happening now is psychological warfare toward us so that we don’t strike them and first to free them, to extend the … I understand the dilemma. It’s a very difficult dilemma that the state is facing, and maybe even the US government. We want them back.