Cohen bringing families of captive Israelis to UN

(JNS) — Foreign Minister Eli Cohen will speak about the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7 and Israel’s response at Tuesday’s United Nations Security Council meeting in New York.

The minister will bring with him relatives of Israelis the terrorist group abducted and took to the Gaza Strip, the Foreign Ministry said. On Monday, the IDF said it had contacted the families of 222 hostages held by Hamas.

Cohen will also participate in events in New York with the families of those kidnapped.

He is also expected to meet with U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres and other foreign ministers, but those arrangements are not yet finalized.

The U.N. Security Council is scheduled to hold its monthly discussion on the Palestinian issue on Tuesday.

On Friday, Hamas released two hostages for what the Palestinian terrorist organization referred to as “humanitarian reasons.”

“Judith Tai Raanan and her daughter Natalie Shoshana Raanan were released by the terrorist organization Hamas,” the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office confirmed.

The pair were kidnapped from Kibbutz Nahal Oz during the Oct. 7 invasion of the western Negev.

Also last week, Hamas released a video showing another Israeli abductee.

“I’m Mia Shem, 21 years old from Shoham. Currently, I’m in Gaza. I returned early Saturday morning from Sderot—I was at a party. I was seriously injured in my hand,” the woman says in the clip. She calls on Israel to “get me out of here as soon as possible.”

Shem was kidnapped while taking part in a music festival in the desert near Kibbutz Re’im, where Hamas gunmen murdered at least 260 festival-goers.

Families of the captives have expressed anger at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s approval of deliveries of water, food and medicine to Gaza through Egypt.