NUJ calls for release of hostage Oded Lifshitz
Oded Lifshitz and his wife Yocheved were kidnapped from their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz near the Gaza border and have been held by Hamas ever since.
Michelle Stanistreet, NUJ general secretary, said:
"We call on Hamas for the swift and safe release of our journalist colleague Oded Lifshitz, his wife and all the hostages taken last Saturday. We share the deepest concerns of the family of this dedicated journalist who was devoted to human rights and peace.”
Oded Lifshitz worked for decades for peace and the recognition of Palestinian rights, including in his work for the left-wing newspaper Al-Hamishmar. In recent years he was among the volunteers of the On the Way to Recovery, an association that transports Palestinian patients for treatment in Israeli hospitals. Every week, he went out in his car to the Erez checkpoint to transport sick residents of Gaza for treatment in the hospitals in Israel.
In 1972 he was one of the leaders in the defence of the Bedouin residents of the Rafah basin, south of Gaza, who were expelled by the occupation authorities in Sinai. He was among the first journalists who arrived in Sabra and Shatila and reported about the massacre that took place in the Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut in September 1982.
Oded and his wife are co-founders of Kibbutz Nir Oz. After the closing of the newspaper Al-Hamishmar in the 1990s, he continued to write in the local and kibbutz press and published opinion articles in Haaretz newspaper.