In the depths of captivity, they formed an unlikely but prized friendship. And reunited in a video call this week, the bond between a recently freed Israeli mother and daughter and a Thai woman who had been held hostage alongside them filled an Israeli hospital room with unbridled joy.
“Both of us give you a big hug,” Danielle Aloni, one of dozens snatched by Hamas militants from a kibbutz in southern Israel on Oct. 7, told her friend Nutthawaree Munkan, an agricultural worker who was seized the same day and held captive in the Gaza Strip. “I love you and I told you while we were there that we are family.”
Aloni, 45, spoke in Hebrew in a five minute video of the Wednesday meeting released by Israel’s Foreign Ministry. Nutthawaree, speaking from the hospital, replied in Thai—and with a flurry of air kisses and a wide smile that required no translation at all.
