The young Franco-Israeli Mia Schem, among the best-known faces in France of the Hamas hostages in Gaza, was released Thursday, November 30 with another Israeli after fifty-four days of captivity. The President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, spoke of “great joy” for all French people.
“It’s the happiest day of my life,” his father, David Schem, responded to Israeli television channel Channel 12. “The army called me, I almost had a heart attack, – he testified. I’m not going to leave her for a long time. »
A video showing Mia’s mother, Keren, shedding tears of joy on the phone was circulating on the networks. “She’s coming home,” said the woman, who gave a moving press conference on October 17 in Tel Aviv begging world leaders to release her “baby,” after Hamas released a video showing her daughter lying down and receiving treatment on one arm.
Mia Schem was kidnapped from the Tribe of Nova electro party in the Negev desert, bordering the Gaza Strip, where 364 people were killed on October 7, and many others kidnapped and taken by Hamas fighters to the Gaza strip.
According to the Forum of Families of Hostages and the Missing, the 21-year-old young woman, who worked in a tattoo parlor, was there in the company of a friend, also Franco-Israeli, Elya Toledano, 27, whose fate is unknown. Mia Schem was released with another hostage, out of a total of ten, on the seventh day of the fragile truce between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement.
“Solidarity with all those who remain hostages of Hamas”
The release of Mia Schem is “a great joy that I share with her family and all French people,” Emmanuel Macron said on X. “I also express my solidarity with all those who remain hostages of Hamas. France is acting with its partners to obtain their release as soon as possible,” added the French president.
Of the eight Franco-Israelis reported “disappeared” in the October 7 attack, four were released: in addition to Mia, three minors, Erez and Sahar Kalderon, 12 and 16 years old, and Eitan Yahalomi, 12 years old, had been released. Monday. The Quai d’Orsay expressed its “immense relief”. “We are delighted that she was able to regain her freedom after the odious captivity she suffered for fifty-four days, marked in particular by her abject depiction in a video published by Hamas. She is now safe in Israel,” according to a statement from the French foreign ministry.
“It’s a huge relief, we were very worried because we knew she was injured,” lawyer Sacha Ghozlan, who defends the families of French hostages and co-founded AV7, responded to Agence France-Presse. , association of lawyers for victims of October 7. “But this joy is incomplete because there are still many hostages in the hands of Hamas in Gaza,” he recalled.
He mentioned Ofer Kalderon, the father of the two Kalderon teenagers released Monday, still detained, and Elya Toledano, “of whom we have no proof of life”. “The wait and the doubt constitute additional torture which adds to the ignominy of the crime,” warns AV7 in a press release, demanding that the perpetrators of this “crime” be brought to justice.
