They exchanged text messages and emojis. Brief status updates with words of encouragement. A picture of the beloved family dog “Tutsi.”
Until no more messages came.
And then, Cindy Flash, an American, and her Israeli husband Igal vanished into the violence, presumed kidnapped by Hamas.
Four days after Hamas attacked Israel, more than 100 Israelis and potentially dozens of foreign nationals are thought to be held captive in the Gaza Strip. At least 14 U.S. citizens have been killed and an unknown number are still unaccounted for.
Flash, 67, originally from St. Paul, Minnesota, is one of them. She lives in Kfar Aza, a kibbutz in southern Israel near Gaza, where some of the most harrowing and grisly stories have been emerging during the last few days.
“They are breaking down the safe room door,” Flash said in one of her final messages to her daughter Keren, 34. “We need someone to come by the house right now.” She had been communicating with her parents from a few houses away.
Keren described her mother, who worked as an administrator in a local college, as someone who had the “sweetest biggest heart,” who everyone knew and loved, and who had spent a lifetime advocating for the rights of Palestinians, including those who live in Gaza where she may now be held.
A state doesn’t need to be independent. Texas isn’t independent. Chechnya isn’t independent.
We are currently using the word state for it’s sovereign meaning given the context of this conversation, not for it’s meaning as a part of a country. In the context of this conversation state is equivalent to country.
No we are not. All you said was that they are of the same age. Age of a state has nothing to do whether it is sovereign or not.
Words can have more than one meaning and you are being disingenuous by conflating ‘state’ as it implies to the U.S. internally and ‘state’ as in a sovereign entity, which is how it is being used in this discussion.
Yes we are. We are using state as a sovereign territory. That is the context of this conversation. I’m sorry you failed to pick up on that.
Yes it does. Canada is 156 years old, not 400 and something, because we gained independence in 1857, even though we’ve existed as part of the British empire since the 1600s.