The Portuguese hostages Ran Gvili and Dror Or. Credit: Israel Police and Courtesy
By Óscar Queirós
Hamas says it does not know where to locate the bodies of four citizens abducted in Israel on October 7, 2023 — among them Dror Or Ermoza, 48, and Ran Gvili, 26, both holders of Portuguese nationality. The whereabouts of the remains of two other citizens abducted that day also remain unknown: Meny Godard, 73, an Israeli, and Sudthisak Rinthalak, 43, a Thai agricultural worker who had been working in Israel to send money back to Bangkok and support his struggling family.
Israeli authorities say they do not believe Hamas’s claims. This view is shared by Gabriel Senderowicz, president of the Jewish Community of Oporto, who considers that “the bodies were taken to be used as bargaining chips” and that “bargaining chips are not lost — much less the bodies of human beings.”
Regarding the fact that Dror and Ran were Portuguese nationals connected to their Jewish community, Senderowicz says this makes the situation particularly painful for him.
“Ran’s great-grandfather, Eduardo Nada, who lived in Cairo, once made his way to Israel because it was a safe place for his family. It’s hard to digest this outcome and to recall the words of that elderly man — especially because, on October 7, 2023, Ran’s grandson was at a hospital awaiting surgery and immediately volunteered to help stop the terrorist invasion that had just begun.”
Speaking of Dror Or Ermoza, Senderowicz says that “it was another beautiful story that ended in tragedy. He came from an Ottoman family who spoke Ladino and inspired the series The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem. Dror deeply loved the world — he was an Israeli, Argentine, and Portuguese citizen — and he was entirely devoted to his immediate family. His wife was murdered alongside him. Their two children — Alma (17) and Noam (15) — were taken hostage and only later released. They will be able to mourn their mother, but not the father of their dreams, who was real and once among them.”
The war in the Gaza Strip was triggered by the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, in which around 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage.
Source: JN
