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Families of Missing Americans Hold Press Conference; Missing Americans in Israel; Israeli Airstrikes Continue on Gaza; Smoke Plumes Seen in Gaza; Jonathan Dekel-Chen is Interviewed about his Missing Son. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired October 10, 2023 - 09:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[09:30:00]

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NAHAR NETA, MOTHER ADRIENNE NETA TAKEN BY HAMAS: Israeli government has to take, or the U.S. Biden administration, for that sake. All we ask from the Biden administration, and the secretary of state, Blinken, is to act to the immediate release of all hostages. And remember that the U.S. government has direct responsibility to the lives of the U.S. citizens that are held hostage by these terrorists. So, whatever any government needs to do in order to make that happen, please make that happen.

LESTER HOLT, NBC NEWS: I'm Lester Holt from NBC News in the United States.

Have any of you been contacted directly by the U.S. administration, or the Israeli administration, in terms of what a pathway toward negotiations might look like?

Thank you.

RUBI CHEN, SON ITAY CHEN IS MISSING AFTER ATTACK: So, what I can say is that the side of the U.S. embassy, we've been in contact with the State Department and the U.S. embassy and have taken note of the details of Itay, but there's been no formal or concentrated attempt to talk to us, as a group, and updating us about what they are doing in this matter. I think it is a legit request from a representative from the State Department to sit with us, update us what they have been doing, on what they are planning to do, and being able to supply us.

From the Israeli government, as I said before, well, we got an indication about the status of Itay, as defined as missing in action. And waiting to get additional updates.

By the way, is there someone here from the U.S. embassy?

No one here.

YUAV BOVICH (ph), CHANNEL (ph) 11 IN ISRAEL: Excuse me. What have you been hearing so far from Israeli officials --

CHEN: Can you identify yourself?

BOVICH (ph): Yuav Bovich from Channel 11 (ph) in Israel.

So, I want to know, please, what have you heard so far from officials, from Israeli officials, how much information are you getting? And what's your expectation of Israel regarding the situation?

JONATHAN DEKEL-CHEN, SON SAGUI DEKEL-CHEN IS MISSING AFTER ATTACK: I can speak, I think, both specifically and more broadly.

Most of the good things that have happened so far, in response at the civilian level, at the civil level, including work around -- efforts around hostages and the missing have been ground up, you know, from the ground up. Groups of citizens coming together to both aid people that live in communities like mine, and also to try to make some sense in this fog of war as to what's happened.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE).

DEKEL-CHEN: I know. I know what you're talking about.

So far there's been little to no contact.

NETA: I - I -- excuse me for interrupting,

I - I am an American citizen, and I've been living in the U.S. for the last five years. As I said before, my mom was born and raised in California. But I was born and raised in a kibbutz, in kibbutz Be'eri. I do not have American education. So, I am natural Israel blunt. And I want to be blunt when answering this question and say zero communication from the Israeli government, zero communication on our side.

I do have friends that are currently engaging in the combat around my home, around kibbutz Be'eri, and I can appreciate the total mayhem and mess that the combat environment is creating. But I think that after three day, more than three days now, it is more than a reasonable request to have somebody from the Israeli government, or the U.S. administration, approach us with any type of information that they may have of our family members.

[09:35:06]

CHEN: At least a plan of what they intend to do.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK, thank you very much to all of the families who were here today.

Thank you to everybody for coming.

We have two gentlemen in the back who will help coordinate individual interviews for any journalists who want to speak directly and specifically with some of the families. And we should all hope and wish for better days.

Thank you. (END VIDEOTAPE)

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Absolutely hope and wish for better days.

What we've been listening to -- and you've been listening along with us -- is four families, desperate, angry, broken, as their family members are missing, and telling their stories and begging for help.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: Yes.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: We're talking about sons of these families, a mother, family members, loved ones. And at the end you heard Nahar Neta, whose mother is currently missing, say that he has received zero communication from either the Israeli government or the U.S. government or -- about the well-being -- potential well-being of his mother, Adrienne.

SIDNER: We also heard them ask, if you don't have information about our loved ones, at least tell us what the plan is with these hostages at this point in time.

We do know a lot of details about each of the persons, we have the family members. Can we, by any chance, go back to Becky Anderson. She is in the room watching all this unfold. There were huge pictures that were put up of each of the people that were missing. And as John just mentioned, we're talking sons, a mother who was a midwife and worked as a nurse helping people. Can you give us some sense now - you asked a question to these families. Give us some sense of what it was like in the room, what it felt like, because from our vantage point it was harrowing, it was touching, it was awful to see these families struggle like this.

BECKY ANDERSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Yes. Yes. I have to say, it was extremely emotional. You could hear a pin drop in this room, quite frankly.

Let me stand away so you can in fact -- you can't see the pictures anymore. It was remarkable, really, wasn't it, to hear these family members who are clearly in shock, and clearly very angry about the lack of communication from authorities about their loved ones.

I thought -- I think it's important to point out that Adrienne, the 66-year-old midwife, was from Be'eri, which the IDF has said was the most badly hit kibbutz. And, listen, you know, a lot of these kibbutzs on the border with Gaza have been very badly hit. The stories that you hear about what happened on Saturday morning are absolutely tragic. But Adrienne was at this Be'eri kibbutz, where she has lived for more than 40 years. Her son Nahar was explaining that he was born there. She's a nurse. And this place witnessed a massacre. And, clearly, you know, she is now missing. And you can just sort of see in Nahar's face, and with his sister here as well, what they're going through at present.

As I say, you know, Be'eri is one of the worst hit of what have been terribly hit Kibbutzs. We also heard from the father of a young man who was at the dance

festival. And we've been reporting, of course, for the last, sort of, 48 hours, 50 hours now, on the massacre that happened there. A young Israeli -- a young soldier serving here in the IDF, his father we heard from, who is now missing in action. And John and Rachel, whose son, of course, Hersh, was at that festival.

I don't think there's much to add, really, as far as the emotion in this room and what we've heard. But they are clearly now appealing to the U.S. administration directly. Appealing to President Biden and appealing to the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, to do whatever they can as - and this was my question to them -- we hear much talk of the imminent incursion by the ground, the ground incursion into Gaza at present. The assumption is that these four families here, representing four people who are missing at present, that the understanding, the assumption is that all of these people are being held hostage by Hamas at present.

BERMAN: Becky, there was one moment when we heard from Nahar Neta, whose woman, Adrienne, you were talking about there, a 66-year-old woman, who was taken from the kibbutz in Be'eri.

[09:40:00]

He said, my most optimistic hope is that she is alive as a hostage in Gaza and not dead at the kibbutz where I grew up. That illustrates, I think, the uncertainty that these families are still living with.

ANDERSON: Absolutely. And you hear this, not just from these families, I have to say, from so many people that we've been speaking to here. There's just a vacuum of information. And as Nahar, Adrienne's son, just said, look, he said, I understand it - you know, it was a chaotic situation. We - we get that. But the fact that there has been so little or no communication since then from authorities is what is - is so difficult for these family members to deal with at present.

And we do know for hours, certainly at the kibbutzs we've had this story retold time and time again, I've heard it from a family at the hospital here yesterday whose son is in ICU, who was at a kibbutz on the border, you hear this story, 6:30 in the morning they heard the rockets. By sort of 8:00 in the morning, 8:20 as Rachel pointed out here, it seems that the militants were overrunning many of these kibbutzs.

Look, bombing isn't -- the rocket fire isn't unfamiliar to many who live in these border communities. So, they got into the bunkers, they got into their shelters, as they normally do. But then these places where overrun. These communities were overrun. And for hours these kibbutz members were in these shelters.

It was 10, 12, 15 hours before anybody came from the Israeli authorities, from the IDF, to help out. And it was some time after that, that many of the wounded were evacuated from the actual kibbutzs. So, there is this -- certainly this sense of abandonment in the early hours. A real sense of, you know, not being able to understand it, just not being able to understand why it was that nobody came for them. And this real sense of abandonment by authorities.

And you're hearing exactly that from these families now. Just not -- not just on the part of the Israelis, but on the part of the U.S. administration at this point as well.

BOLDUAN: Thanks, Becky.

SIDNER: And we should make some distinction, just after listening to the four of them, that some of them have not heard from their loved ones at all. They don't know where they are. They don't know if they are hostages. They don't know if they're been taken. They don't know if they are dead or alive. They assume they've been taken because they have not heard anything from hospitals. They have not - I think Itay Chen, who is a soldier, an Israeli soldier, there's no information.

But you do have the family, Neta's family, Nahar Neta's mother, Adrienne, they heard her taken. They heard her being taken. They heard her speaking the little bit of Arabic that she knows to try to calm down the terrorists.

BOLDUAN: That is also what's difficult about this is that a lot of families were on the phone with their loved ones as the last communications occurred.

SIDNER: That's what's different. Yes.

BOLDUAN: And as -- to Becky's point, you know, these kibbutzs, especially along the border with Gaza, they are used to rocket fire.

SIDNER: Right.

BOLDUAN: That is not unusual to them. What is different is, as Jonathan put it, as he said, he's a self-defined peacenik in Israel, this kind of savagery and inhumanity with how their families were overrun, their kibbutz, kibbutz were overrun, that has to stop.

And speaking of rocket fire, we want to get back over to Nic Robertson right now. He's in Sderot, where you've been this morning, Nic. And you - and there is more -- there's more - there are more missile attacks happening. Tell me what you're seeing.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yes, there are. In the last ten minutes there were more rockets fired in from Gaza. The Iron Dome here fired off the sirens to warn people to go to their shelters and be ready. I'm hearing explosions in the sky above me. There are detonations probably linked with the attacks that are going on in Gaza at the moment. You can see just - if, John, if you're able to pan a little bit around there, you can probably see some of the smoke rising up from Gaza.

We are relatively close here, in a secure location. But the targets in Gaza have been the Hamas firing sites. The Hamas leadership. Islamic jihad firing points leadership as well, but Hamas specifically is what the Israeli defense force say that they are targeting.

[09:45:05] And I'm looking there in the sky. It looks like a number of rockets have just been launched from Gaza. One, two, three, four. You don't really hear them being launched. At night you can see the fiery trail. But right now, I'm looking at them in the sky. And the fact that they haven't been intercepted yet would indicate to me that they're potentially on their way to central Israel. Maybe sort of Tel Aviv area. And I would expect the Iron Domes further north in Israel to try to be intercepting those soon. But, again, impossible to say. I've just seen the trails of the rockets. They weren't there a few seconds ago.

It's a dynamic situation. This vantage point allows you to sort of see what's going on here. But the Iron Dome intercepts, that when the coastline is being attacked, there is Ashkelon where the power station is, further north along the coast is Ashdod. And when they're being attacked there, you really get a strong view of the Iron Dome in -- trying to intercept. And I'm hearing some distant - distant fire in this direction, which is maybe the intercept of those rockets we were looking at there just underway.

SIDNER: Nic, as you're speaking, we were looking at pictures of Gaza, and we could see exactly what you were describing from Gaza very clearly, that rockets had been launched. You can see the trail of smoke that they create.

You can also see what appears to be air strikes. There is a huge black plume of smoke that came up just as you were speaking, right before we saw the trail from the rockets coming over to - near where you are.

And so you're in a precarious position. Can you give us some sense about who is still there? Are there still civilians in Sderot, or because you are so close to the border, or is it mostly quiet and it's just the military who is there trying to secure it?

ROBERTSON: There's a handful of citizens here at the moment. But it - but it's a -- it is really a handful. This is really a town that is actively being patrolled by the Israeli Defense Forces, by the police, because there's a concern there's a potential, you know, a limited potential for Hamas.

But the fact that Hamas came in here and essentially -- well, were killing people and took people always and kidnapped them and wrought fear and terror on the population here. Most people have decided to leave. The stores aren't open. So you can't -- even if you were living here, you couldn't go out and buy bread or buy food for your family.

So, quite literally, most people have left here at the moment.

BERMAN: Nic, stand by, if you will, because we just put up a shot of our colleague, Jeremy Diamond, who's also in Sderot.

Jeremy, if you can hear us, tell us what you're seeing.

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, John, you can really feel the full war footing that Israel is on right here in Sderot, in so many different senses. On one hand, you have convoys of reservists, of IDF troops, who are headed towards Gaza. We just saw five Humvees with about a dozen IDF soldiers in each of those Humvees heading in a the direction of Gaza.

And at the same time, minutes ago, we just had a barrage of rockets, Iron Dome intercepts, right overhead where we were. We actually went - we're standing right in front of a shelter. There was a woman here who was delivering meals, food for those troops who are mobilizing at this moment. She rushed into the shelter. And we were all headed in the same direction.

But, again, there is this sense that life is still going on here. And yet, at the same time, there is a calm sense of slight concern. One woman stopped here on the side of the road to ask us if we could come with her to get her gas tank filled at the gas station, simply because she is afraid of those rockets overhead. Does not want to be alone. Wants to feel some sense of security. She tried to flag down a police officer to do the same.

So, on the one hand, you have life continuing. But on the other hand you have this eerie sense that life is not as it typically is here, and certainly a sense of concern, a sense of fear, and also a sense that this country is gearing up for something much bigger as all of these troops head to the border.

BOLDUAN: Absolutely, Jeremy. All right, Jeremy, thank you so much for that.

We're going to go now back to Becky Anderson, who is speaking with one of the men that we just heard, Jonathan, from that press conference, who is missing his son.

Becky.

ANDERSON: That's right. And this is Sagui's dad.

And I've just got to - just tell you where we are. We've just had sirens going off here. And so we've come into the shelter, which is the stairwell in this hotel.

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And some enormous booms outside here in Tel Aviv. That would have been the Iron Dome intercepting rockets coming in. This is the third time in the past hour that we've had these sirens that we've sought shelter. So that's just explaining where we are.

Jonathan is joining me now.

Sagui is 35 years old. He's a father of two. And one on the way.

JONATHAN DEKEL-CHEN, SON SAGUI DEKEL-CHEN IS MISSING AFTER ATTACK: A father of two beautiful girls and one more on the way, yes.

ANDERSON: You spoke about what you hoped the U.S. administration could do next. In practical terms, what are you asking for? DEKEL-CHEN: Well, the United States administration, and its various services, have relationships in the world. And with countries that Israel does not. And it could be helpful for the United States, and its various parts, to engage with those friends, and those acquaintances, to help in -- negotiate in some way, secure the release or at least get solid information, not just about Sagui, but there are well over 130 hostages, or, like my son, simply people that we have no information whatsoever about.

And so it really would be a kind of partnership, but a partnership in a just cause. These are civilians. These are farmers, teachers, regular people like my son who had dreams, have dreams. And this is not - this is not the future any of us want.

ANDERSON: We heard from four families whose kids, mom, are missing at present. Somewhat assumed to be hostages now with Hamas. And you all explained that you have not only heard nothing about the whereabouts of your loved one, but that you haven't been contacted yourself. You would -- it was very clear from the press conference that we just heard that there is some frustration about that.

DEKEL-CHEN: Oh, I would say if this was a representative group, there's a great deal of frustration. That most of the organizing on behalf of, not just the families of the missing and the hostages, but also for the communities in the south. I mean that is my home. And there are well over a dozens communities that are uninhabitable today. They are smoking wrecks as a result of what we are saying is a pogrom, or what very much looks like a pogrom from 100 years ago in terms of its savagery.

More specifically about hostages or - and - and the missing, there's been no contact whatsoever. And the lists, of course, are growing, because more and more is becoming revealed outside of the fog of war about the people who we just could not track down and realize that they are, in fact, not with us, and somewhere in Gaza. Not being contacted in general, and in this - including the American government, but that's not, at least from my perspective, that's not the main thrust here. It's what to do now. And I would like to believe that even if it is the barbarianism of Hamas, and they've proven it, they've proven it. I'm a man of peace, but they have shown their colors. There's no question. They are not all of Gaza. But they are a sickness.

And I don't know what the future of negotiations would look like, and -- but I do know that forces of good in the world, in the same way that they came together to defeat, at least temporary, ISIS, have the power to come together to create a better ending to this than without those combined forces of good.

And in this case, it is the light on the hill, the United States. And I knew that growing up in the states. And pray that that remains true. I believe it is.

ANDERSON: I'm sure many people watching this can only imagine -- or can't imagine, actually, let me express myself properly, can't imagine what it is that you are going through, and probably can't believe how sort of together you are to a - to a certain extent.

Tell me, how are you and how's the family?

DEKEL-CHEN: The -- my children and grandchildren who were on the kibbutz, so Sagui's young family and another young family, experienced a living hell for the better part of 20 hours.

[09:55:02]

These are young children. Young men and women who cannot be anything other than traumatized by what they witnessed. My job now, as a parent, is to try to put the pieces back together and figure out what our next step is, both personally, as families, but also as a community. We were a kibbutz. And communal farm with a history, with a culture, with a beautiful home in -- on the border of Israel. That home is no more. It doesn't exist anymore. And so the 160 of the 400 people who were there on Saturday morning, the 160 who survived it, we - and plus -- we pray more of the missing and the hostages, we have to figure out now what to do and where to do it.

ANDERSON: Thank you.

DEKEL-CHEN: You're welcome.

ANDERSON: Thank you.

So, the message from here is really quite clear. I mean the concern about a ground incursion is apparent. But the message from the family members here is really, you know, talk to us, get involved. They are needing to hear about what happens next and needing to understand how involved the U.S. government is in what happens next.

BOLDUAN: Yes.

ANDERSON: Back to you guys.

BOLDUAN: And seeing Jonathan just standing there behind you is just like emblematic of the resolve of these families. They will not give up, as they should not, until their family members are found and brought home.

Please -- I know he can't hear us -- but please, please -

SIDNER: Thank him.

BOLDUAN: Thank him for us all.

SIDNER: Yes.

Can we just mention, and show the pictures of those that are missing. We've been hearing about them, but we didn't get a really good look at who is missing right now. These are Americans that are missing. Their families have been begging for any information about them.

We know that some of them were on the phone with -- one of them was a mother. So this young man is a soldier who was at his post and his family has heard nothing from him. This is Itay Chen, 19 years old. They've heard nothing. They don't know where he is. But they don't believe that he has - in the hospital. They've heard nothing from the hospital. They have heard he is not on any of the deceased lists. They just don't know.

We should also mention Adrienne Neta. She's 66 years old. She was living in Be'eri, which we heard from the Israeli government was a - and I hate to use this word, but a bloodbath. It was that terrible in that kibbutz. But her family heard her being taken. Heard the terrorists coming in and taking her away. Heard her speaking to them. And then they have not heard from her since.

There's also Hirsch Polin-Goldberg. He is 23 years old. His family said, look, he loved life and he was at the music festival trying to enjoy himself on Saturday and they believe he, too, has been taken.

And then there is Sagui Dekel-Chen. We just heard from his father, who has lived on a kibbutz his entire life and he has said, over and over, I'm a peacenik, but my whole life has been changed and I see Hamas as true terrorists. They need to be taken out. That's where we are.

BOLDUAN: All right, we're going to continue our coverage of this. There's much more ahead.

We are also waiting - going to be standing by. We're going to be hearing from President Joe Biden. He will be speaking about this, about the attack from Hamas, the terror attack in Israel, and the position of the United States. We're going to be hearing from him later today.

We'll be right back.

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