My son, one of the forgotten Thai hostages taken from Israel on October 7
Manee Jirachart was making his daily phone call home to Thailand early on October 7 when the first Hamas missiles roared over the kibbutz where he worked, close to the Gaza Strip. “Mum, they’re firing rockets again,” he said to his mother, Buasri.
“I told him, ‘Be careful, go to the bunker if needed, don’t go outside’,” she recalled last week at the family’s smallholding in a village in Udon Thani province in northeastern Thailand. “But I wasn’t too worried. Why would Thais be a target?”
Her husband, Chumporn, was equally relaxed. He had spent five years doing the same job as their son in the maintenance team at the Re’im kibbutz. The family’s new house, their Isuzu pick-up next to the chicken pen and their herd of 23 cows all suggested the benefits of working in Israel justified the odd security scare.
But
October 7 was not like previous mornings. Buasri’s first inkling that something was seriously wrong came a few hours later, when a Thai friend of her son called from Israel saying Manee had been arrested. “I thought, ‘What’s he done wrong?’
Then images broadcast by a Hamas-affiliated “military media” channel were forwarded to her phone.
They showed five men, arms tied behind their backs, seated against a wall in what appeared to be a tunnel, guarded by a captor in black uniform wearing a green headband with Arabic script. He was training an automatic weapon on the group. Looking down the sights of the gun, staring ahead blankly, was Manee.
“It was shocking, horrifying,” said Buasri. “He went there to pursue a dream, like his father did, the chance for a better life for his family. We know tensions were part of life there, but why would they kill and kidnap Thais? We have nothing to do with the conflict. It isn’t our war.”
Manee, 29, was among about 30,000 Thai migrant workers employed in Israel just over a month ago — the largest labour force in its agriculture sector. Thais also make up the highest number of non-Israeli victims of the attacks — 39 dead, 19 injured and 25 abducted, according to Thai government tallies.
Israeli sources have said there could be as many as 54 Thai hostages, but Thai officials believe this conflates the dead and missing.
The confusion reflects the migrants’ existence on the margins in Israel. Thais remain the largely forgotten victims of the attacks.
Their government is trying to negotiate their release. Parnpree Bahiddha-Nukara, Thailand’s foreign minister, recently travelled to Qatar and Egypt, while leaders of the country’s Muslim community met Hamas representatives in Tehran. There has been no public sign of progress.
Manee’s parents have learnt nothing more about their son since the images of him were broadcast. They both had requests for the warring parties.
To Hamas, Buasri said: “If our son is alive, please release a photo of him. We just want to see his face.” Chumporn directed his comments at Israel. “Please stop the bombing of Gaza,” he said. “There needs to be a ceasefire now, not just for the sake of my son, but for all the hostages and all the innocent people in Gaza too. They are not the terrorists.”
Outside, the sun was setting on a long, hot day at the end of the rainy season. The family had just finished harvesting the rice in their fields beside the village temple where monks chant prayers for Manee. This bucolic corner of Thailand, far from the hatreds of the Holy Land, was where Manee planned to make a life for himself when his contract ended in the coming months.
He was sending home about 40,000 baht (£900) a month — money his parents were putting aside for him so he could build a house. He hoped to have a wife and raise a family.
For generations, men from Isaan, Thailand’s poorest region, have travelled abroad for work to send money home. Contracts in Israel were among the most desired — relatively well-paid and better treated than jobs in the Gulf or East Asia.
The predominantly Buddhist Thais believed they were not at serious risk from the hostilities between Jews and Muslims. Migrant workers have described good relations with Israelis and Palestinians.
“The Israelis treated us well. But I also worked with people from Gaza. They were our friends too. We would eat rice with people of all races and religions,” said Chumporn, using the Thai phrase for sharing a meal. “We had no arguments with anyone, we were working peacefully together.” He has spent most of his adult life working abroad, including in Israel for five years (the maximum allowed under contract agreements between the two governments). “There are no good jobs here,” he said.
Most Thais working in Israel have stayed on after the attacks, often saying they cannot afford to leave.
For returnees, there are major financial challenges. Many borrowed money to pay recruitment fees in the expectation of five years’ work. Back in Thailand, they are jobless and in debt, although the government has said they will receive about £1,500 in compensation. Families of those confirmed dead will receive larger sums.
Among the 8,000 who have been repatriated is Withawat Kunwong. He was left for dead with deep knife wounds in the October 7 attacks. He recounted his ordeal last week sitting next to his wife, On, at her parents’ small plot of land outside another Udon Thani village.
That day he arrived early for work at a chicken farm next to the Holit kibbutz, close to the wire-fence frontier with Gaza and the Egyptian border. He too thought little of the first rockets when they screamed through the skies. But by 7am, he could hear intense gunfire and explosions and saw buildings on fire a few hundred metres away.
He hid in the farm bunker, a small room of reinforced concrete. Peeking out of a slit window, he saw armed men in black combat clothes swarming through the farm.
He draws shapes in the sand at our feet to show how close they passed the bunker. Worried he would be trapped, he decided to make a break for nearby bushes.
But a second wave of armed men returned. “They knew someone was there, they were looking for me,” he said. Eventually a man in a combat jacket carrying a long knife found him.
“I kept saying, ‘Thailand, Thailand’. I wanted him to know I had nothing to do with this situation. But he was shouting at me in Arabic and pointing to lie down. I was afraid he’d sit on me and slit my throat or take me prisoner, so I thought, ‘I’ll fight him. If I’m going to die, I die with dignity.’ ”
Withawat used self-defence skills he learnt in the Thai army. The man slashed him repeatedly in the neck and head. Weak from loss of blood, he eventually passed out. “I guess he left me for dead,” he said. “I was lucky.”
When he came round, the blood was already caking. He crawled through undergrowth towards a worker dormitory, where he found other Thais hiding. They tried to patch up his wounds but the attackers were still in the area.
At last Israeli soldiers arrived and, with gunmen still on the street, they scrambled for safety as their rescuers laid down covering fire. Withawat was evacuated by helicopter to hospital then flown home. His scars are healing now, but the photographs of his bloodied face and body after the attack show how fortunate he was to escape with his life.
He had moved to Israel four years earlier when he was newly married, with a baby daughter. Several others from the village had built new houses after sending home money earned there. “I knew there was a conflict,” he said. “Sometimes rockets were fired but I had no real idea about the details. I just knew that other Thais were making good money there.”
The family forked out the standard recruitment agency fees of 100,000 baht (£2,250), using a land title as guarantee. Withawat initially worked on a vegetable farm, then moved to the chicken business.
The workload was heavy — ten-hour shifts, six days a week — but in good months he sent home 50,000 baht (£1,140). “Israel is very rewarding financially for people from here,” he said. How much would he earn in Isaan? He and On laughed. The Thailand minimum wage is £7.50 a day. One day he hopes to find work abroad again. “But maybe not Israel.”
news.sky.com
www.statista.com
www.rte.ie
