Mother of Israeli hostage Mia Shem on Hamas video: "I see the pain"
The mother of a French-Israeli woman among the scores of people being held hostage by Hamas after the Palestinian group's terror attack on Israel, and who is seen in a harrowing new propaganda video released by the group, has told CBS News she hopes it indicates Hamas' willingness to negotiate over her daughter's release.
The disturbing video shared Monday by Hamas' on its Telegram messaging app channel shows 21-year-old French-Israeli national Mia Shem lying on a bed with her right arm appearing to be injured and treated by somebody out of the camera's view.
Shem appears somewhat distressed as she speaks directly to the camera, saying she's been taken to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and pleading to be returned to her family.
"It's very hard to see my daughter, I see the pain, I see that she's in physical pain," Keren Shem, Mia's mother, told CBS News on Tuesday. "I see that she's very emotional and very, very scared."
Except in rare cases, CBS News does not broadcast videos of hostages if they appear to be propaganda produced by the captors. The network is not showing the Hamas video of Shem at this time.
The Israeli military has also released chilling new body camera video that it says came from a Hamas gunman, taken as he stalked victims in an Israeli kibbutz. It offers a frightening glimpse at the unprecedented, bloody terror attack carried out by Hamas inside southern Israel.
Haunting images, which appeared to have been edited together, show Hamas militants hunting Israeli civilians inside their own homes. The body camera of one gunman captured the moment he was killed.
For Israelis, including Army Capt. Shai, whose last name we're withholding for security reasons, the images of last week's bloody Hamas rampage have been forever etched in memory. For the dual U.S.-Israeli national , it was a clear calling to serve his country.
Shai lives in Queens with his wife and three children. On Oct. 7, he was at his synagogue in New York with his phone turned off.
"Somebody came up to me and said, 'Did you hear what happened in Israel?' And I said, 'No, what happened?' And he said: 'Terrorists.' I immediately understood that this is something else."
Along with more than 300,000 other Israel Defense Forces reservists, he was soon called up for duty. Shai is now in southern Israel, ready and waiting for an order to launch a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip. He says the mission isn't about wanting to fight, but needing to.
"I personally want to sit on the beach and have a gin and tonic," he admited. "But unfortunately, we don't have that privilege. We don't have that. You know, this is our only country... we have nowhere else to go."
In the aftermath of the Hamas attack, Israeli forces have laid siege to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, leaving much of the densely packed Palestinian territory in ruins and completely blockaded. Officials in Gaza say Israeli airstrikes have killed more than 80 people over the last day alone.
Shai said the brutality of the attacks on Israeli civilians was a national trauma not experienced since the Holocaust. But unlike that attack on the Jewish people in the 1940s, "now we have a country, and now we can defend ourselves, and that's what we have to do. I have no other choice, and I'm proud to do it."
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