Gazans demanded ransom for two of the youngest hostages, father reveals

Yoni Asher’s wife and his 4½- and 2½-year-old daughters were ultimately freed in the first hostage deal.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Yoni Asher revealed Tuesday that he had received several ransom demands from Gazans for the release of his two young daughters after they and his wife were kidnapped from her mother’s home in Kibbutz Nir Oz on Oct. 7, 2023, along with 248 other victims from the Gaza envelope.

In a post on Facebook marking the second anniversary of their eventual release in the first hostage deal six weeks into the war triggered by the Hamas-led invasion, he showed a partial picture of “one of the ransom demands I received.”

According to the cut-off screenshot, the sender, “Ahmad Alnabulsi,” whose Facebook account’s photo showed an armed, uniformed terrorist in a Hamas tunnel, contacted him on Nov. 1, three weeks before the deal.

He asked Asher if he had “a wife and children who are detained” and claimed that “there are 10 to 15 detainees who will be released in the coming days, and all their families have paid to Hamas.”

“Do the right thing, my brother, and wait for the governments to save your family,” he urged, seemingly meaning that Asher should actually not wait for official action.

“It’s up to you, brother. I am ready to help if you agree to this.”

In an interview with Walla, Asher said that there had been more than one person who contacted him demanding money for his loved ones, and “I cooperated with the IDF’s cyber unit on all of them.”

“They were all taken very seriously,” he said. “One specific one was taken extremely seriously. And there was a weeklong email correspondence. In the end, they disproved it.”

Alnabulsi also claimed to have had influence in getting a child named “Yagil” back to his family, presumably for cash.

This was untrue, as 12-year-old Yagil Yaakov, also taken from Nir Oz, was freed a few days after the Ashers, during the weeklong deal at the end of November 2023 that saw 86 Israeli women and children exchanged for a cease-fire, about 240 female and underage Palestinian security prisoners, and tons of humanitarian aid.

As far as is known, none of the 251 hostages were freed in exchange for money.

The IDF did drop leaflets throughout the Gaza Strip after the war began that promised millions of shekels to anyone who would spirit out hostages, or even tip Israel off as to any of their whereabouts.

Asher had not gone with his wife, Doron, 4½- year-old Raz and 2½-year-old Aviv on their visit to Doron’s childhood home during the Sukkot holiday.

Doron called him from their safe room when terrorists penetrated the house, and he told her to hang up so they wouldn’t hear her voice.

After not hearing from her for several hours, Asher traced Doron’s phone to Khan Yunis, and then saw a video on Telegram showing terrorists loading his family onto a wagon, covering Doron’s hair, and taking them into Gaza.