Saving Abigail

Book excerpt: Saving Abigail is a true story about a little girl taken hostage by Hamas the morning of October 7, 2023, after thousands of terrorists breached Israel by land, sea, and air. That day, Hamas slaughtered 1,200 men, women, and children, and 246 innocent people were dragged across the border into Gaza against their will. Among them was three-year-old Abigail Mor Edan, whose border community was ransacked by fighters going from house to house and killing, raping, and abducting civilians from their homes. Abigail’s mother and father were murdered in front of their children, and Abigail—the youngest—was abducted. With no prior experience or road map for how to save a hostage from captivity, Abigail’s great aunt Liz Hirsh Naftali undertook an international effort to share her niece’s face and story—with the US government, bipartisan congressional leaders, and world leaders—finding unlikely allies and supporters along the way. Though not a diplomat, politician, or military expert, Liz was determined to extricate this child from an ongoing geopolitical nightmare and free her from the Hamas terrorists who held her.