JERUSALEM — Ohad Munder-Zichri’s family doesn’t know if he has his glasses.
It may seem like a small thing given the situation — the 8-year-old is believed to be among the roughly 200 Israeli hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza. But in the long nights of waiting for news, the thought of Ohad being unable to see is a source of sharp pain for his loved ones.
“He cannot manage without his glasses,” his cousin, Osnat Meiri, told NBC News Thursday at her mother's home in Jerusalem. “This is something that weighs a lot on his father. He always talks about, ‘What about his glasses?’ I hope they let him keep it.”
Ohad, who turns 9 on Monday, was at a family gathering at the kibbutz Nir Oz when Hamas terrorists burst through the Gaza border fence on Oct. 7, said Meiri, 53.
Along with his mother Keren Munder, 54, and his grandparents Ruth and Avraham, both 78, he has not been heard of since then, she said, adding that another cousin, 50-year-old Roee, was killed.
The Israeli military confirmed that the family’s cellphones had been detected in Gaza, she said. But despite scrolling through hours of chaotic videos purporting to show the attacks, Meiri said the family had seen no sign that their loved ones had been taken into Gaza.
Israel’s military has been unable to give them certainty about what happened, she added.
NBC News has asked the Israel Defense Forces for comment about Ohad's case.
In an update Friday the IDF said more than 20 of the 200 hostages in the Gaza Strip were children under the age of 18 and 10 to 20 of them were over the age of 60. “The majority of the hostages are alive. There were also dead bodies that were taken hostage to the Gaza Strip,” it added.
“You have to understand, we are waiting for them to come back,” Meiri said. “My cousin lost her brother. My uncle and aunt lost their son. They don’t know that their house, that the whole place where they lived for so many years, is ruined.”
Meiri said her family were among the founders of Nir Oz, a community of around 400 people just a mile-and-a-half from the Gaza border.
Like many of the kibbutzim, it was politically liberal, and Meiri said that before Israel’s withdrew from Gaza in 2005, volunteers would drive Gazans to Israeli hospitals for treatment.
“People still believe in peace,” she said. “But this was pure evil.”
She urged countries around the world to use whatever diplomatic backchannels were available to broker a deal to free the hostages.
“There is no time," she said. "And that’s why you have to do everything in your power to bring them back, because there is no time.”
