Abigail Edan has returned home two days after her birthday kidnapped by the jihadist group Hamas. She has spent 51 days of her recently completed four years in captivity in the Gaza Strip without knowing why unknown assailants shot her parents, why she cannot see daylight and why hooded men took her from Kibbutz Kfar Aza, in the south of Israel, to a distant place even if it is just a few kilometers from his home. Not knowing why someone named Joe Biden called her family to ask about her after she was released.

Abigail also does not know that she has become a symbol in Israel or that her return was a personal mission from the American president who, after remembering that the American-Israeli girl suffered “a terrible trauma,” emotionally confirmed: “She is free.”. Thank God he's home.”

Along with eight other Israeli children and four women, Abigail was part of the list of the third round of the truce agreement. In addition, Hamas released an Israeli-Russian “as a gesture of recognition to President Vladimir Putin for his support for the Palestinian cause,” and three Thais.

Of the dozens of children kidnapped in the October 7 attack that sparked the massive Israeli military operation, only Abigail was kidnapped without her parents.. On “Black Saturday”, his kibbutz was awakened by Hamas shells. His father Roy, a photographer for the news website YNET, did not hesitate, left the house and took incredible photos of people arriving by paraglider.. He quickly returned home. The terrorists also hurried. His wife Smadar had already been murdered.. Shortly after, he was shot in front of Abigail.. The girl, with her father's blood on her clothes, ran to the neighbors' house.

“Suddenly, I heard soft knocking on the door. I saw Abigail all white with blood that was not hers.. He started running. I took her into the house with my wife and went to look for a weapon,” said Avijai Brodetz, who tried with other neighbors to contain the attack.. When he returned, he no longer found his wife Hagar or his children Ofri (10), Yuval (8) and Oriya (4) nor Abigail, the little girl of his great friend Roy.. He thought they were murdered until they notified him of everyone's kidnapping.. Not everyone because Abigail's older brothers, Mijail (9) and Amalia (6) were saved by hiding for more than 10 hours in a closet.

51 days later, grandparents Liza and Carmel followed every movement on television on the minibus leaving Gaza. “I hope they don't forget about her if she falls asleep. She was alone but when she comes she won't be,” Liza promised while Carmel was not all in: “Until I see her in the hands of the soldiers, I don't believe it.”. “I don't trust Hamas terrorists.”. Asked on Channel 13 what he would say when he saw her for the first time, he answered: “Nothing, just hugs and kisses.”

Twenty-four hours earlier, Thomas Hand was able to hug his daughter Emily (9), released in the second round of the four-day ceasefire in which Hamas frees 50 Israeli hostages (among the 239 it held) while Israel releases 150 Palestinian prisoners. (women and adolescents) and increases humanitarian aid to the punished Gaza Strip that has been breathing for three days without bombs, cannon shots and missiles. The two sides seem to agree to extend the truce an additional day for every 10 hostages released, including children and women.

Hand, who immigrated to Israel three decades ago from Ireland, missed Emily's birthday a week ago but not the hope of seeing her again since “the paradise of Kibbutz Beeri” turned into hell.. Then, members of Hamas' Nukba Unit murdered more than 100 people in the town of just over 1,100 people.. Among them, Emily's stepmother. The girl was kidnapped along with her friend Hila Rotem (13) and her mother, Raya.

While Emily was in the depths of some tunnel, her father moved in the heights installed on a roller coaster of powerful emotions.. When he was told in the first few days that Emily had been murdered, Hand contained his anger and even thanked him.. For him, it was better to know that his little girl was dead than to imagine her suffering in the hands of Hamas on sleepless nights.. “It's the best news among the options I had,” she said through tears.

Days later, however, they informed him that there was an error in identifying the body.. “We had a witness who saw how the terrorists took her to a van heading to Gaza,” he revealed.

Like many other parents, grandparents, children and grandchildren, Hand went around the world to ask for his release. “She is now in the hands of Hamas, deep in the tunnels of Hamas,” he shouted at a demonstration near Downing Street in London, recalling that Emily had already lost her mother to cancer at the age of 3.

“I must continue until she is returned to me, it is my only goal in life,” Hand promised.. Objective achieved. Emily returned with her friend Hila although for her the joy is not complete since her mother is still kidnapped in Gaza. Israel protested to Qatari, Egyptian and American mediators alleging that Hamas did not comply with the requirement not to separate children from their mothers.. Yahia Sinwar's group responded that they could not locate her and offered an elderly woman in exchange.. Hila, however, has revealed to her family that she was with her mother all this time until they were separated two days before her release.

As soon as she crossed the border, Maya Regev (21) was rushed to the Soroka hospital where she underwent surgery.. She is the first young woman to return among those kidnapped in the Palestinian armed attack against the music festival near Kibbutz Reim that ended in silence with 364 victims. Maya had gone to the party with her brother Itai who is still kidnapped.

The elderly Alma Avraham, kidnapped from her own home in Kibbutz Nahal Oz and released this Sunday, was rushed by helicopter to Soroka Hospital in Beer Sheva. Her life is in danger, the 84-year-old Israeli admits at the health center.

Since Friday, a country in deep trauma and at war, despite the truce, sees and stars in a dramatic series by chapters. Every afternoon, he monitors a batch of faces and names. Every afternoon, Israelis do not take their eyes off the screen to get excited about the return of those who regain their freedom and who since 7-O are now part of their family.

Twelve ministers, twelve ministers and a vice president missing in political combat. The first official photo of Daniel Noboa's government did not disappoint almost anyone, with similar doses of hope and controversy: parity, youth and diversity on the one hand and the absence of the vice president, Verónica Abad, on the other..

The president, with his band on his chest, surrounded himself with his ministers for a year and a half of express policy under the siege of drug trafficking and the economic crisis. The time is so short that the moderate leader has decided to cut short the first crisis of magnitude unleashed in the Palace.. Abad, politically banished, did not even go to Carondelet for the historic photo.

In the distribution of spaces, with cards glued to the floor where each one had to stand, there was no space for the “collaborator for peace” in the conflict in Israel, reduced in her functions after the restructuring of the vice presidency and “sent to Tel- “Aviv”.

Abad took advantage of the day before the celebration of the day to eradicate violence against women to defend herself through a melodramatic video that she uploaded to her social networks: “There is violence when, abusing power, they minimize you and send you to die in war.”. They may push us away but the echo of our voice will free us.”.

Businesswoman, social activist and former candidate for mayor of Cuenca, Abad landed in the Noboa candidacy after forcing the National Electoral Council (CNE) to achieve parity in the presidential ticket, as well as to achieve the coast-mountain balance essential in Ecuadorian politics.. From the first minute he showed his own agenda that foreshadowed problems in the future, although not of this magnitude.. The crisis worsened when Abad forced two political meetings, the first with Santiago Abascal, leader of VOX, and the second with Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele during the Miss Universe celebration.. Noboa, who calls himself a “moderate social democrat”, has opted for a centrist policy far from the radical and populist poles that dominate politics in Latin America today..

Two drops that overflowed the camel's back and led the election winner to slip in a speech, a few meters from his vice president, that “the path to the top also has betrayals, many times from people one does not even expect, people who one chooses. But that's life, that's human nature.”.

To further confuse the situation, Ariana Tanca wrote a devastating tweet hours before going from being a political scientist to Minister of Women and Human Rights in response to the vice president's video: “Mambrú went to war,” she shot sarcastically..

“Keep her in office with her own agenda, outside of any strategy and letting her create fires that the presidency is then obliged to put out?” asked political analyst Pedro Donoso to agree with the president..

It is not the first time, far from it, that the president and vice president have undertaken political blows. Lenín Moreno, for example, also pointed out very early on Jorge Glas, stained by revolutionary corruption, who finally ended up in jail..

The controversy generated by Abad eclipsed the political reach of those who will accompany Noboa in such a national situation, who according to the president “have taken the responsibility of turning around a country that is seriously wounded.”. “They take responsibility for risking their lives.”.

The great political bet of the first cabinet, mostly made up of women and young people, is the lawyer and university professor Mónica Palencia, who was granted Ecuadorian nationality this week after 40 years in the country, so that she could assume the Ministry of Government (something similar to a prime minister), with the charge in addition to the Interior portfolio. “The criminal mentality has taken over many, both in the public sector and in the private sector and that is what we are going to work towards as well,” said the new minister regarding the organized crime that terrorizes her country..

Governance, almost impossible during the 300 days of conservative Guillermo Lasso's mandate due to his own mistakes and harassment from the legislative opposition, and insecurity are the two enormous challenges that Palencia, known for its temperance, takes on..

The other super minister is Juan Carlos Vega, in charge of rehabilitating an economy haunted by default. This portfolio has been in question for weeks, after Noboa was forced to give up naming his first candidate, the young economist Sariha Moya, 35 years old, trained at Madrid's Universidad Carlos III.. In their meetings in Washington with entities such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in search of a loan of 10,000 million dollars, they showed that they preferred more experience for the position.

Moya will be in charge of the National Planning Secretariat at the head of a large group of young and highly qualified women. Sade Fritschi, only 26 years old and a native of the Galapagos Islands, is the head of the Ministry of the Environment. Ecuadorian Greta Thunberg even had a project to protect elephants in Zimbabwe.

A TIKTOKER FOR THE MINISTRY OF DEFENSE

In a country where TikTok has been transcendental in the last two elections, a tiktoker like Giancarlo Loffredo, the new Minister of Defense, known for his self-defense tutorials and his own karate school, could not be missing.. The influencer has become the major surprise of the new cabinet, being far from the profile that the circle closest to Noboa was betting on to fight against the “internal war”: in-depth knowledge of the Armed Forces and the Police, in addition as an expert in Intelligence, strategy and military tactics. Prudent in his first statements, Loffredo announced that urgent security decrees are coming.

The actresses Tracey-Ann Oberman and Maureen Lipman led, with their professional colleague Eddie Marsan, the massive demonstration against anti-Semitism and in defense of “British values of tolerance, kindness and security for all”, which took place this Sunday in London. Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson and those responsible for security and immigration in the current Conservative government, Tom Tugenhadt and Robert Jenrick, were also seen at the national protest.

Some 60,000 individuals – above the organizers' own forecasts – took to the streets, under a leaden sky and enduring an occasional sirimiri, in solidarity with the Jewish community of the United Kingdom, which feels intimidated since the bloody Hamas attacks of the last October.

The police arrested the ultra Tommy Robinson, founder of the English Defense League (EDL), for refusing to leave the route of the march, which started at the Palace of Justice and advanced parallel to the Thames until reaching the ministerial arteries of the center of London and ending in Parliament Square.

Robinson had called on his followers on social media to join the demonstration to “let British Jews know that they are not alone.”. The Campaign Against Semitism vetoed him for being undesirable and for fear that his public support for the movement “would cause harassment and alarm and concern” the public, as Scotland Yard acknowledged.

“It does not represent us. He is a racist,” Rabbi Ithamar Handleman denounced to EL MUNDO, while advancing with the tide of protesters along the north bank of the river.. “It is not a political march, but a protest against the raging anti-Semitism that continues to explode in the United Kingdom, the European Union and the rest of the world. In the UK, incidents against Jews have increased by 1,400% since October 8.”

Sharon Bierer, daughter of a German Jewish refugee, celebrates the arrest of the English nationalist “fascist and anti-Semitic leader” “How can he dare to come here?” she questions. Tommy Robinson is a pseudonym under which he hides his real identity, Stephen Lennon, and a long criminal record for fraud, harassment, assault and drugs, among other crimes.. He now risks returning to prison for contempt of judicial authority in connection with the persecution of a Syrian refugee, then-schoolboy Jamal Hijazi, according to a 2021 ruling.

Meanwhile, calm and tranquility spread through the chain of protesters and the silence was broken on occasions to demand the release of all the hostages held by Hamas.. Many showed images of children and adults captured by the terrorist organization, demanding their “return home.”

Up to 1,500 police officers, including operatives from other English regions, were deployed this weekend for successive marches in favor of Palestinians and Jewish communities.. No major incidents were reported at any of the events, although 18 people were arrested on Saturday for incitement and other public order charges.. Some 300,000 citizens participated in that demonstration demanding a ceasefire from Israel, according to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

“Israel had no other options to seek the return of the hostages and protect the border with Gaza,” defends the rabbi, who declares himself a critic of Benjamin Netanyahu's government and a supporter of the political solution of the coexistence of two states in the region.. “It is a war and in wars people die,” agrees Bierer from London about the high number of Muslims killed in the bombings of the Strip.

Both agree in describing the gestures in support of the Palestinian people as “manifestations of hate”, which intimidate Jewish communities.. “It is the first time in my life that I have felt rejected in my country. “I am 66 years old and I have never experienced anti-Semitism until now,” he explains to this newspaper.. Christian and with a British mother, she summarizes the situation in Israel as the fight between David and Goliath. “We are the underdogs, never the favorites. “Israel is always blamed and I only understand that as anti-Semitism.”

Moderate hope resurfaces at the worst moment, when the rift between populist and extremist poles grows the most. The 2019 riots, the impact of the pandemic, infinite corruption, the discredit of political parties and the punishment vote