TEL AVIV / GAZA – Nattapong Pinta left Thailand to pick fruit in Israel’s fields. He returned in a coffin.
Abducted during Hamas’s deadly October 7 rampage and taken into Gaza, Pinta was confirmed killed early in the war. His body was recovered this weekend in a risky Israeli military operation in Rafah, a city now synonymous with destruction. He was the last known Thai hostage. Two more Thai bodies remain lost in the rubble. In total, 46 Thai workers who had no part in this conflict have been killed. Do their lives matter less simply because they were outsiders?
Even as one family receives their loved one’s remains, others are burying theirs. In the past 24 hours, at least 95 more people were killed in Israeli airstrikes across Gaza, according to health officials. One blast wiped out a mother and her five children. Another leveled a home with six more lives inside. With more than 54,000 Palestinians dead, most of them women and children, when does self-defense become something else?
Meanwhile, in Gaza’s chaos, even food has become a deadly risk. Witnesses say people trying to reach aid hubs have been shot. Israel claims some approached soldiers “in a threatening manner.” But what does it say when warning shots are fired at starving people? Can anyone honestly believe food is being given without fear?
A new aid system, backed by Israel and run by a U.S.-linked group, is replacing the U.N. a move Israel says will keep supplies from Hamas. But aid agencies argue it’s a dangerous experiment that weaponizes hunger. Who should control the lifelines to an isolated civilian population of soldiers, politicians, or the people meant to save lives?
The war began with horror: 1,200 Israelis killed, 251 taken hostage. Since then, most have been returned or confirmed dead. But 55 remain. Their families beg for a ceasefire. Yet the bombing continues, the death toll climbs, and the world watches. Is this about rescuing hostages or something far more uncontainable?
As funerals continue on both sides and hope things with each passing day, perhaps the most important question is also the simplest: How many more?
