At Gate 10 of the Arrival Hall at Bangkok Airport, Wichayada Sayan strokes his son's hair, as if he was a little boy, not a man he had grown up. A few feet away, Ponsac Tanna wrapped her arm around her father and didn't let go. His tears dampened his father's shoulders.
“To see my son, it's indescribable,” said Villas Tana, Ponsac's father. “I can't say it in words.”
On Sunday morning, five hostages returned to Thailand after 15 months of confinement in Gaza. The reunion of the family at the airport was a happy culmination of the ordeal that has hit a massive community of Thai workers since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
Despite having nothing to do with the conflict, the Thais were the biggest victims of the fear Hamas unleashed after the Israelites. At least 39 Thai agricultural workers were killed on October 7th. More than 30 people were taken hostages, and the majority were released in November 2023. One of the last Thai hostages remains unexplained.
“Today is a very emotional day,” said Thai Foreign Minister Maris Sanggin Ponsa.
Poverty forced tens of thousands of people, particularly from northeastern Thailand, to find jobs in Israel as farmers. Their numbers rose in the 1990s after the first intifadas or uprisings, when farm owners were searching for alternatives to Palestinian workers. There are currently approximately 30,000 people. About 5,000 people worked in fields near the border with Gaza and helped grow many of the fresh produce eaten in Israel.
Israeli salaries are at least five times more than those who have returned to Isan, as the northeast is known, by choosing avocados, raising chickens, and caring for strawberries. Even after the murders on October 7th, the money thousands of Thais stayed in Israel is transformative. Others continue to travel there with new contracts.
The danger continues to chase them. In October, Hezbollah Rockets killed four Thais in northern Israel. In the same month, another Thai died near the Israeli-Lebanon border when a weapon exploded in Orchard.
For several months, Villas made a pilgrimage to a Buddhist temple and pleaded for the safety of his son, Ponsac. He was practiced in prayer rituals: incense, marigolds, hands gathered in pleas.
Just before midnight on Sunday, he got into the van for a long drive to Bangkok to reunite with his son and arrived at the airport before dawn. His family couldn't afford plane tickets, he said.
His son would soon be ordained as a monk to show his gratitude for his survival, he said.
“I felt like I was reborn after my death,” Ponsac said of his prisoner of war and liberation.
At Bangkok airport in Nukan Suvarnakham, mother of another hostage mother, Satian Suvarnakham, she was surprised that her son appears healthy even after 15 months of prisoner.
“He looks fat,” Nukan said. “He has Chubia's cheeks.”
Her son said that all he was captured was to “eat and sleep.”
The hostages were mostly surviving with pitas, beans and vegetables, they said, and small meat. The flavor was much pale than Isan's fiery dishes with chili peppers and fermented flourishing. Hostages were lacking vitamin D for several months indoors, a Thai diplomat said.
Another hostage, Anon Satao, 22-year-old wife of Bangnawat Saetao, held her husband's hand at the airport. She stroked his back. She snuggled over his shoulder. They have three children, 16 months old, 4 and 6 years old.
The children knew that their father worked abroad, she said. They were too young to know the truth about his 15 months for longer than he actually worked as a farmer in Israel.
Even if other Thai workers are willing to return to Israel or do so, Anon said her family is different. Such risks are not worth it.
“I will never allow him to work abroad again,” she said.
