Family of Israeli hostages in Gaza pleads at Raleigh rally to ‘bring them home’

Protesters waving Israeli flags marched through downtown Raleigh Tuesday evening as they called for the release of hostages in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

Over 100 people, many of them Jewish, assembled in Moore Square. Many wore signs that read “KIDNAPPED” with the photos and names of some of the people taken hostage on Oct. 7 in the Gaza Strip by Hamas in a surprise attack on Israel.

Among those victims and hostages are family members of Stanley and Marion Robboy, Jewish Americans with extensive family in Israel. They spoke at Tuesday’s rally.

“It’s a tragedy,” said Stanley Robboy, 81. “Kibbutz Be’eri, which one of Marion’s cousins founded having come from the Holocaust, was ground zero for this recent (attack).”

Speaking through a megaphone, Robboy described to rallygoers how he learned of some of his relatives being killed by Hamas, which he equated to Islamic terrorist organizations like ISIS and Al-Qaeda.

Hamas, an Islamist militant group and political organization, has governed over 2 million people in the Gaza Strip since being elected in 2006, and is best known for its armed resistance to Israel, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

“The Hamas needs to be wiped out,” he said. “Israel has to persist and clean out everybody. What happened in our country? About 10 years ago, America went into Iraq, and ISIS was pretty terrible. When the U.S. went in, about 30,000 civilians were killed, and whole cities were completely leveled. But the U.S. persisted, that’s what we want to see.”

He also spoke about Germany and Japan in World War II, and how the two countries were attacked and bombed by the U.S., but became allies later on.

Killed, kidnapped, taken hostage by Hamas

Over 1,400 people — mostly civilians — were killed by Hamas in Israel. Hamas targeted kibbutzes, or small agricultural communes, in southern Israel near the border of the Palestinian Gaza Strip on Oct. 7. It’s considered the worst attack in the recent history of the longstanding conflict between Israel and militants in the Palestinian territories.

There were 232 people kidnapped and taken hostage, according to the Israeli government, for whom “Bring them home!” was chanted throughout the night.

Stanley Robboy said other relatives were killed by Hamas, and on his wife’s side, at least six family members were taken hostage in Gaza.

“I have two sets of cousins in two different kibbutzes ... (one) was traveling to work in the morning to learn he no longer has a wife, his three kids are dead, and his two in-laws are dead,” Stanley told The News & Observer. “So, yes, this is all very personal.”

Robboy, a veteran Duke University pathologist, is also the secretary and treasurer of Voice4Israel of North Carolina, one of the groups that organized the march along with the Jewish Federation of Greater Raleigh.

His wife Marion, disagreed with the opposing calls for a ceasefire in the war that have come from large rallies and marches held in the Triangle

“It’s just, it’s the worst thing that could happen, because it gives Hamas to the possibility of, you know, reorganizing,” said Marion, 85.

‘Social media full of death’ after surprise Hamas attack

Yotam Cahana of the organization Club Z, a local youth Zionist group, was the main organizer of the rally.

He recalled scrolling on his phone a month ago, seeing news of the surprise Hamas attack.

“That day we see all of our social media full of death ... my Instagram was full of blood, full of children murdered,” said Cahana, 30. “Imagine people on social media and (they) send you, ‘They attacked my town, I don’t know what to do, call the army, help me.’”

Cahana emphasized that he lived, studied and worked among other Arabs peacefully in Qalansuwa in Israel before moving to North Carolina four years ago. He denied claims of Israel being an “apartheid.”

“The problem is extremism,” said Cahana.

Asked about what he thought of the Israeli government’s and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s role in defending Israel from the attack, Cahana shook his head.

“I’m too mad about it,” he said.

The rally attendees marched through downtown, chanting “Bring them home,” and circled three times through downtown streets before returning to Moore Square.

“Hamas is a singular terrorist organization that brought the terror on October 7th and continues to bring the terror by keeping 240 innocent civilians hostage,” Brad Young, who is originally from Tel Aviv, told The N&O as he marched. “It’s OK to speak out against that terrorist organization and still say that you support Palestinian rights.”

Support of humanitarian ceasefire

The number of Palestinians killed in the war passed 10,300, including more than 4,200 children, the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza said on Tuesday, according to the Associated Press.

Young held a sign that read “Palestine ≠ Hamas” along with text that read “Palestinians are my friends, neighbors and partners for peace. Palestinians fear Hamas as much as I do.”

Young emphasized that he mourns the thousands of Palestinians, mostly women and children, who have been killed by Israeli bombing in the conflict.

He said he supports the idea of a humanitarian ceasefire to Israel’s bombing of Gaza if Hamas would release the hostages.

The crowd sang the Israeli national anthem, sang Hebrew prayers together and chanted “Bring them home!” once again.

Tuesday evening’s march and rally was the third event to be organized in support of Israel since October.