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Hisham al-Sayed reunited with his father, BH
hisham is a muslim arab bedouin. he is a schizophreniac and disabled. he used to like to take long walks, sometimes taking him into unsafe locations. when he walked into the gaza strip in 2015, he was taken by hamas. in 2022, hamas published a video of hisham looking very sick, with an iv drip and an oxygen mask. hisham was released without the usual public ceremony that other hostages had to endure. hamas claimed it was out of "respect to the family".
Ynet cited al-Sayed’s relatives as rejecting Hamas’s argument. “They should have released him in a ceremony, like [they did] the Jews, without distinction. It makes us feel as though he’s special and better than the rest. For us, every hostage is important, whether Jewish or Arab,” said one relative cited by the news site. Another relative was said to add: “There is no respect here. Everyone knows he was detained and everything he went through.”
and via reuters:
"Why were they holding someone like that who did nothing wrong? He's a man of peace, a man who wanted to reach Gaza, he loves Gaza, he did not go there as an aggressor," Sayed's father Shaaban al-Sayed told Israeli public radio this week. "This was more painful for us than everything else."
hisham's father, shaaban, said in a radio interview earlier today: "i am very negatively surprised [by hisham's condition]. his mental condition is very bad. he's not communicating. he looks like he was in a torture camp for 10 years. we never imagined that hamas are that cruel, they've done a disgusting deed. he's emotionally and mentally wiped out." [translated from this]
avera mengistu, also released earlier today, is another mentally ill man (an ethiopian jew) who walked into the gaza strip and was held hostage by hamas for over 10 years. avera did have to endure the usual public release ceremony orchestrated by hamas.
