- The mother of a woman whose body was paraded through the streets has pleaded for help finding her.
- A video showed the semi-naked German tattoo artist Shani Louk on the back of a pickup truck.
- Louk was attending a dance festival when Hamas attacked. It is not known whether she is alive.
The mother of a woman whose body was paraded through the streets by Hamas has pleaded for help finding her daughter.
A video showing German tattoo artist Shani Louk on the back of a pickup truck circulated on social media after the Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel on October 7.
Louk had been attending an outdoor “Festival for Peace” party near Kibbutz Urim when the area was targeted. First, rockets were launched, then gunmen and appeared and shot into the crowd, CNN reported. Party attendees told the outlet people immediately started to flee, passing dead bodies on the ground as they tried to escape the massacre.
The attack and resulting conflict has left hundreds of Israelis and Palestinians dead, with Israel’s prime minister declaring war.
A video of a young woman with dreadlocks on the back of a pickup truck and surrounded by Hamas soldiers started circulating on social media shortly after the attack. In it, she appears stripped to her underwear, and her legs are bent at unnatural angles, while one soldier grabs her hair. People are also seen spitting on her body.
Her face isn’t visible, but her characteristic dreadlocks and tattoos helped her family identify her as Louk, according to the Washington Post.
Louk’s mother, Ricarda Louk, shared a video that has also circulated on social media, where she pleaded for more information about what happened to her daughter, who is in her early 20s and a German-Israeli dual citizen.
“This morning my daughter Shani Louk, a German citizen who was with a tourist group in the south of Israel, was kidnapped by Palestinian Hamas. I was sent a video where I could clearly see my daughter unconscious in a car with Palestinians,” she said in German, which Insider has translated. “Please send any help or news. Thank you.”
Louk’s cousin Tom Weintraub Louk spoke with the Washington Post, saying the family tried to contact Louk after news of the attack spread.
“We knew she was in the party. She didn’t answer,” he said.
It is currently unknown whether she is alive.
“We have some kind of hope,” Tom said. “Hamas is responsible for her and the others.”
On Louk’s Instagram, where she has 36,000 followers, she describes herself as a tattoo artist and hair stylist. Her posts show her traveling the world, attending festivals, and spreading messages of spirituality.
Comments underneath her photos are now full of messages hoping she is alive, and condemning the war, and the actions of the Hamas fighters in the video.
“One day you are having fun at the festival, the next day the whole world is watching your lifeless body behind the pickup on the internet… scary and brutal,” one comment reads. “My only wish is that those who did this will not go unpunished.”
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