Families say return of hostages should come before destroying Hamas

Hagar Brodutch is haunted by many memories of her 51 days in Hamas captivity, but teaching her children to cry without making a sound is the most searing.

“It’s impossible for 4-year-olds to cry silently,” she told NBC News, speaking of her son Uriah, and her then 3-year-old neighbor Avigail Idan, whose parents were murdered in front of her, and whom Brodutch cared for along with her other children, Ofri, 10, and Yuval, 8.

Brodutch, 40, says her captors, a Palestinian family with 10 children in Gaza, were afraid neighbors or Israeli forces would be alerted that hostages were inside their house. Still, despite her family’s life-altering experience, she and her husband, Avihai, 42, say that the return of the remaining 134 hostages should take priority in the war.