Gaza hostage daughter: Help me bring my dad back from Gaza
Sharone Lifschitz, whose parents were kidnapped by Hamas in Gaza, spoke at Sunday's Haaretz conference at JW3 in North London
A British-Israeli woman whose parents were kidnapped by Hamas in Gaza has urged a packed conference to join her in pressing for her father and the other hostages to be freed.
Sharone Lifschitz, an academic, added: “We have to imagine something more — that sanity is possible, and we have to work for it in every way.”
Lifschitz, whose 85-year-old mother, Yocheved, was among the first hostages to be freed by the terror group after October 7, but whose 83-year-old father, Oded, remains in captivity, was a speaker at the Haaretz conference held at the North London community centre.
“There’s a whole generation who grew up in Israel thinking that Netanyahu is the forever Prime Minister,” she told the audience.
“We have to imagine something more …and we have to work for it in every way that we can.”
Lifschitz said October 7 “didn’t come out of nothing.” “On both sides, I am not going to wait for anything,” she added.
“I’m going to wait for the hostages, I have a contract with them. I ask you to participate in that contract and share it. ”
Taking aim at the protesters who gathered outside Sunday’s event, she said her parents believed that all people are born equal, but added “the people standing outside here, I guess, believe they had no right to be there.”
Meanwhile leader of Israel’s Arab-Jewish party Hadash has told a conference at JW3 in north London that the UK government must “end all military, financial, and diplomatic support” to Benjamin Netanyahu government.
Speaking at Sunday’s event Knesset member Ayman Odeh said: “The United Kingdom must make good on the government’s promise to support an immediate ceasefire by ending all military, financial, and diplomatic support of the Netanyahu government’s war crimes and working to broker a prisoner-hostage exchange deal.
“Not a single penny must be allowed to go to the government of Netanyahu, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir to recolonize Gaza and annex all of Palestine.”
Odeh, an Arab Israeli lawyer, and politician, also called for Keir Starmer’s government to recognise a Palestinian state. He said: “It is beyond time that the United Kingdom joins the 146 nations in officially recognizing the State of Palestine.
“But this recognition must not be symbolic, nor seen as a reward to be withheld for another day. It must be implemented now, as a step toward creating the conditions for sincere negotiations that will finally bring about a two-state solution based on democracy, equality, and justice.”
A Palestinian citizen of Israel, Odeh called for what he said would be “a just, equal future for all of us – Palestinians and Israelis, Arabs and Jews.”
Turning to the deadly conflict in Gaza, he added: “The war must end now.
“”There must be a prisoner-hostage exchange deal immediately. And all nations of the world must do their part to end the atrocities and demand an immediate renewal of negotiations toward a final agreement. Let today be the last day of this criminal war, and let it be the first day of a new era in the history of our peoples.”
The conference was held in cooperation with: JW3, New Israel Fund U.K., Yachad, A Land for All, and Standing Together.
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