At the door of 10 halls of the arrival of Bangkok Airport, Wichayada Saeyang caressed his son’s hair, as if he were a little boy, not an adult man. A few meters, Pongsak Thanna wrapped his hands on his father’s hands and did not let him go. Tears muffled his father’s shoulder.
“Let me see my son, it’s indescribable,” said Vilas Thanna, the father of Mr. Pongsak. “I can’t say that in words.”
On Sunday morning, Five hostages He returned to Thailand after 15 months of captivity in Gaza. Family gatherings at the airport were a happy culmination of temptation that developed a large community of Thai workers from the attack on Israel on Israel on October 7, 2023.
Despite having nothing to do with the conflict, the Thais, after the Israelites, they were the greatest victim of the terror that Hamas had released. At least 39 Thai agricultural workers were killed on 7 October more than 30 took a hostagewith most published in November 2023. Two died during captivity; The last Thai hostage is left with no responsibility.
“Today is a very emotional day,” said Maris Sangiampongs, a Thai Foreign Minister, who received five hostages at Bangkok Airport, describing how wonderful it is “that a person can return home to the warmth of his family.”
Poverty forced tens of thousands of people from Thailand, especially from the Rural Northeast, to find a job in Israel as a rural hand. Their numbers climbed in the 1990s after the first intifads or getting up, when the farm owners sought substitutes for Palestinian workers, and now about 30,000. About 5000 of them worked fields near the Gaza border, helping to grow much of the fresh products eaten in Israel.
Salaries in Israel – for the selection of avocado, breeding hens, strawberry care – are at least five times higher than those at home in Isaan, such as the northeast. Thus, the transformative money that thousands of Thais remained in Israel even after the killings on October 7th. Others continued to travel there new contracts.
The danger continues to haunt them. In October, Hezbollah Rockets killed four Thai people in the north of Israel. The same month, another Thai died near the border of Israel-Lebanon, when Ordnance exploded in orchard.
For months, Mr. Vilas made a pilgrimage to Buddhist temples, praying for the safety of his son, Mr. Pongsak. Grow practiced on the ritual of prayer: incense, marigold, his hands gathered in prayer.
Shortly before midnight on Sunday, he boarded a long ride to Bangkok to reunite with his son, coming to the airport before dawn. His family couldn’t afford a plane ticket, he said.
His son, he said, would soon be ordained a monk to show his gratitude for survival.
“I felt like I died and I was born again,” Mr. Pongsak said of his captivity and release.
At Bangkok Airport, Nukan Suwannakham, the mother of another hostage, Sathian Suwannakham, she admired that even after 15 months of captivity, her son looked healthy.
“It even looks thicker,” Mrs. Nukan said. “There’s Chubbier cheeks.”
Her son told her that everything he had done in captivity was “eating and sleeping”.
The hostages mostly survived the pie, beans and vegetables, they said, along with some meat. The flavors were far milder than the fiery Isaan cuisine, with their chilli and fermented flourishing. Months indoors left hostages that were not missing Vitamin D, Thai diplomats said.
Anong Saethao, 22-year-old wife of Bannawat Saethao, another hostage, held his husband’s hand at the airport. She squeezed his back. She settled in his shoulder. They have three children, aged 16 months, 4 and 6.
The children only knew that their father was working abroad, she said. They were too young to know the truth about his 15 months as hostage, longer than the time he actually worked as a agricultural man in Israel.
Even if other Thai workers returned to Israel or are ready, Mrs. Anong said her family was different. No money is worth such risks.
“I’ll never let him work more abroad,” she said.
