A viral video captured the harrowing moment as Naama Levy, a 19-year-old Hands of Peace partcipant, is forcibly extracted from a car trunk by a terrorist.
By Batya Jerenberg
In a cruel twist of fate, a 19-year-old peace activist is one of more than 24o hostages that Hamas terrorists kidnapped on October 7 during their invasion of Gaza envelope communities in which they massacred 1,400 people, the vast majority of them civilians.
In a video clip publicized by Hamas that has gone viral, a bloodied Naama Levy can be seen being yanked out of the very back of a jeep-like vehicle by a Hamas terrorist dressed in a flak jacket and put into the back seat.
Her light gray pants are full of blood stains on the legs, and on the back side, leading to speculation that she had been raped.
Levy is a member of Hands of Peace, a U.S.-based group whose mission is to “empower American, Israeli and Palestinian youth to become agents of change” for a “positive peace” because it believes that “the existing conditions among Israelis and Palestinians are unacceptable and there must be an urgent, non-violent end to occupation that leads to safety and security for all.”
In a clip of remarks she made in English at a meeting of the group, Levy says, “I decided to join ‘Hands of Peace’ because I want to hear the other side. We live so close to each other but we never actually get to talk to one another.”
The organization belongs to the umbrella Alliance for Middle East Peace (ALLMEP), whose executive director, John Lyndon, posted to X on Monday his horror over her capture.
“As it’s now in media, can confirm that yes: Naama — whose brutal kidnap was captured on video on Oct 7th— was participant with @ALLMEP member Hands of Peace,” he wrote. “We have been working with her mother, whose strength is unimaginable, & we call for her and all hostages’ immediate release.”
Lyndon was “shocked” at the video, he told The JC, a British Jewish media outlet, and Levy’s fellow teens in Hands of Peace “have been traumatized.”
While being “worried about their friend,” however, he said “they are still committed to peace with each other. They don’t have to agree but they can acknowledge each other and they still do.”
The terrorists kidnapped several other peace activists who tried to help their Gazan neighbors all the time from their kibbutzim in their fervor for peaceful coexistence. Many of the kibbutzim at the border were known as leftist strongholds that provided Palestinian agricultural workers with a steady livelihood in their fields.
Vivian Silver, 74, a Canadian-Israeli, was one of 30 taken from their homes in Kibbutz Be’eri without the terrorists caring that she had spent decades calling out Israel for its alleged bad treatment of Palestinians and working on peace initiatives. She regularly drove sick Palestinians to Israeli hospitals for medical treatments, with their entry expedited based on the government’s purely humanitarian concerns.
Other elderly and veteran peace activists kidnapped the day that Israelis are calling “Black Sabbath” include Ada Sagi and a married couple, Yocheved and Oded Lifschitz, all of Kibbutz Nir Oz.
Lyndon acknowledged that it was a “horrible irony” that so many of those who worked for coexistence were victims of the terror organization that has ruled Gaza since 2007.
“They are people who walk the walk and know that the only way to peace is together,” he said. “Hamas didn’t care who they were killing or taking on October 7.”