Itongadol.- After 10 months living in the dark with their loved one’s fate a mystery, the family of Avraham (Avera) Mengistu asked for the public to show restraint on Thursday, hours after a gag order was lifted on the 26-year-old’s disappearance last year after crossing the border into Gaza.
Ilan Mengistu, Avraham’s brother, said his family “has decided to behave with restraint and give the government time to get our brother back home and we also ask the people of Israel to show restraint.”
Standing with his father Ayele and mother Agernesh, Ilan said the family “considers this a humanitarian issue and we call on the international community to get involved and work to secure the release of my brother.”
He then turned to Hamas and said, “I ask that Hamas consider the condition of my brother and release him.”
The family exited through the press scrum back into their apartment after making no further comments. For the past 10 months they have kept quiet, helping to keep the story out of the press and unknown to most Israelis, a media blackout that has been assured by a strict gag order on the entirety of the story.
In the crumpling apartment blocks of the Ben-Azai neighborhood of Ashkelon however, the story might be old news.
A local resident and her friend said they’d both known about the story months before it went public on Thursday, as did a few other neighbors spoken to by The Jerusalem Post. When asked how the story stayed under wraps if the whole neighborhood was talking about it, people said that rumors circulated widely on Facebook and WhatsApp for months, and in a few websites outside of Israel, but nothing beyond that.