At Gate 10 of the arrivals hall of the Bangkok airport, Wichayada Saeyang stroked her son’s hair, as if he were a small boy, not a grown man. A few feet away, Pongsak Thanna wrapped his arms around his father and did not let go. His tears dampened his father’s shoulder.
“To see my son, it’s indescribable,” said Vilas Thanna, Mr. Pongsak’s father. “I cannot say it in words.”
On Sunday morning, five hostages returned to Thailand after 15 months of captivity in Gaza. The family reunions at the airport were a happy culmination to an ordeal that has roiled a large community of Thai laborers since the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Despite having nothing to do with the conflict, Thais were, after Israelis, the biggest victims of the terror that Hamas unleashed. At least 39 Thai agricultural workers were killed on Oct. 7. More than 30 were taken hostage, with the majority released in November 2023. Two died during captivity; one final Thai hostage remains unaccounted for.
“Today is a very emotional day,” said Maris Sangiampongsa, Thailand’s foreign minister, who received the five hostages at the Bangkok airport, describing how wonderful it was “for a person to be able to come home to the warmth of their family.”
Poverty has compelled tens of thousands of people from Thailand, particularly from the rural northeast, to find work in Israel as farmhands. Their numbers climbed in the 1990s after the first intifada, or uprising, when farm owners were looking for replacements for Palestinian workers, and are now around 30,000. About 5,000 of them worked the fields near the border with Gaza, helping to grow much of the fresh produce eaten in Israel.
Salaries in Israel — for picking avocados, raising chickens, tending strawberries — are at least five times that of those back home in Isaan, as the northeast is known. So transformative is the money that thousands of Thais stayed in Israel even after the Oct. 7 killings. Others have continued to travel there on new contracts.
Danger continues to stalk them. In October, Hezbollah rockets killed four Thais in northern Israel. The same month, another Thai died near the Israel-Lebanon border when ordnance exploded in an orchard.
For months, Mr. Vilas made pilgrimages to Buddhist temples, pleading for the safety of his son, Mr. Pongsak. He grew practiced at the ritual of prayer: the incense, the marigolds, the hands brought together in supplication.
Just before midnight on Sunday, he boarded a van for the long drive to Bangkok to reunite with his son, arriving at the airport before dawn. His family could not afford a plane ticket, he said.
His son, he said, would soon be ordained as a monk to show his gratitude for survival.
“It felt like I died and I was reborn,” Mr. Pongsak said of his captivity and release.
At the Bangkok airport, Nukan Suwannakham, the mother of another hostage, Sathian Suwannakham, marveled that even after 15 months of captivity her son looked healthy.
“He even looks fatter,” Ms. Nukan said. “He has chubbier cheeks.”
Her son told her that all he did in captivity was “eat and sleep.”
The hostages survived mostly on pita, beans and vegetables, they said, along with a little meat. The flavors were far blander than the fiery cuisine of Isaan, with its chilies and fermented flourishes. Months indoors left the hostages lacking vitamin D, Thai diplomats said.
Anong Saethao, the 22-year-old wife of Bannawat Saethao, another hostage, held her husband’s hand at the airport. She stroked his back. She nestled into his shoulder. They have three children, ages 16 months, 4 and 6.
The children knew only that their father was working abroad, she said. They were too young to know the truth about his 15 months as a hostage, longer than the time he had actually worked as a farmhand in Israel.
Even if other Thai laborers have returned to Israel or are willing to do so, Ms. Anong said her family was different. No money is worth such risks.
“I will never allow him to work abroad again,” she said.
