Avera Mengistu

Avraham "Avera" Mengistu (Hebrew: ; born 1986) is an Ethiopian-born Israeli man who was held hostage by Hamas for over ten years. Having crossed into Gaza on September 7, 2014, he was kidnapped and interrogated by Hamas and then held for ransom; his family stated that he is mentally unstable and had been admitted to a mental hospital in the past. He had been treated with medication, which he stopped taking a few weeks prior to his crossing. He was released on February 22, 2025, during the Gaza war ceasefire.

Background Mengistu was born near Gondar, Ethiopia, the fourth of ten children born to Ayelin and Agernesh Mengistu. He made aliyah, immigrated to Israel, with his family at age five as part of Operation Solomon and grew up in a low-income neighborhood in Ashkelon, which is from Gaza. His mother cleaned houses for a living, while his father became unemployed, and his parents divorced in 2012. In a column in The Jerusalem Post, Tal Harris described the Mengistu family as extremely underprivileged and belonging to the poorest socio-economic sector of Israeli society. After finishing high school, Mengistu worked in a series of low paid jobs, including recycling. A security camera on an army watchtower noticed him trying to climb the fence, and the patrol that had let him pass earlier was notified. By the time they arrived, Mengistu had reached the top of the fence. They called for him to stop and fired a warning shot into the air, but he ignored them and scaled the fence. He left behind the bag, which was found to contain slippers, a towel, a Bible, and a few other books, one of which had his name on it. Israel contacted the Red Cross and officials in the Gaza Strip and demanded that Mengistu be returned to Israel. Later, Mousa Abu Marzook, deputy chairman of Hamas's political bureau, said in an interview with Al Jazeera that Mengistu wore a uniform, was mentally healthy, and that his case had come up during truce negotiations related to the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict, which took place weeks before the date Israel says Mengistu crossed into Gaza.

Hamas A message posted on Hamas's Twitter account said, "Obviously, the real Israeli motto is 'leave no Ashkenazi man behind,'" an apparent reference to the military and diplomatic efforts made by Israel on behalf of captured soldier Gilad Shalit and the lack of such efforts on Mengistu's behalf.

In 2016, Hamas demanded the release of 60 Palestinian prisoners who were released as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange and subsequently rearrested as the "entry fee" to start negotiating for the release of Mengistu and for the separation of his negotiation from other issues. An unnamed Israeli official said in July 2016 that Hamas wanted a deal similar to the Shalit exchange, in which hundreds of prisoners would be released in return for the bodies of IDF soldier Oron Shaul and IDF officer Hadar Goldin and the living civilians Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed, an Israeli Bedouin held by Hamas.

Efforts to release In Israel, a blanket gag order regarding the incident was put into place. It lasted 10 months, until July 9, 2015. Discussions took place in social media forums and some reports were published on foreign websites. The gag order was lifted following a request from Haaretz.

By family The Mengistu family went to Geneva in 2015 to meet with human rights organizations, including the Red Cross and Amnesty International, in an effort to gain their assistance and to put pressure on Hamas to release Avera. The family provided medical documentation of his hospitalizations and his need for daily medication and therapy, as well as proof he did not serve in the army, carry any weapon, and was in no way involved in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The family returned to Israel with the promise of help. Critics say the Mengistu family is being treated poorly because of their Ethiopian ethnicity. Avera's brother, Yalo, has stated that if Avera were white, the affair would have been handled differently.

Organizations In May 2017, Human Rights Watch issued a report condemning Hamas for holding Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed, another Israeli, incommunicado, calling on the group to "officially and unconditionally disclose" whether it was holding the men and to free them unless "a credible legal basis" for holding them could be provided. In its report, Human Rights Watch wrote that both men had histories of mental health problems. The report also said that although the Hamas military wing had referred to both men as soldiers, Mengistu had been deemed "unfit for [military] service" by the IDF and al-Sayed had been discharged three months after he volunteered in 2008 as "incompatible for service". The report added that photos of the men in military uniforms circulated by Hamas appeared to have been "photoshopped". He then spent five months undergoing physical and psychiatric treatment in Ichilov Hospital, before being released from the hospital on July 22, 2025. His family stated that he would be moved to sheltered accommodations adapted to his needs.