After two years of captivity in Gaza, the remains of agricultural student Joshua Loitu Mollel returned to Israel.
By Jonathan Feldstein
In the early morning of October 7, 2023, as rockets streaked across the sky and gunfire shattered the quiet of southern Israel, a young man from Tanzania pedaled his bicycle along a dusty road near Kibbutz Nahal Oz. Joshua Loitu Mollel, 21, had arrived in Israel only 19 days earlier, pursuing a personal dream and to be part of the Biblical prophecy of Ezekiel 36:8 witnessing and learning from the tremendous agricultural innovation that has made Israel such a beacon of agricultural prowess to developing nations of the world, miraculously making the desert bloom. “And you, the mountains of Israel, will produce your branches, and you will bear your fruit for My people Israel because they are about to come.”
Joshua was a devout Christian, embodying the quiet resilience of his faith – humble, hardworking, and hopeful. He saw the opportunities in Israel as an answer to personal prayer and a light unto the nations, planning to glean experience to bring back to and enrich his impoverished village. But that morning, Hamas terrorists stormed Israel’s border, and Joshua’s life was cut short in a frenzy of inhuman atrocities. Joshua was confirmed killed, his body dragged into Gaza and held captive ever since.
Earlier this month, the remains of four other hostages who were killed on October 7 or murdered in captivity were returned to Israel. But Joshua’s remains, and that of six other hostages, were still being held by Hamas terrorists, a bargaining chip in Hamas’s cruel calculus, a poignant reminder of how far their extremist Islamic hatred extends and impacts Jews and Christians together, worldwide. Joshua’s remains were finally returned to Israel during the evening of November 5, 2025.
It was meant to be so different.
Arriving in Israel full of hope, leaving behind his parents and siblings, Joshua promised to return with skills to combat drought and poverty and make agriculture in Tanzania blossom. Joshua’s faith sustained him; he attended church, prayed, and wrote home about the “miracle” of irrigation systems that turned desert into bounty. Yet, on that fateful day, his innocence made him a target. Albeit not to be confused as an Israeli Jew who Hamas vows to annihilate, eyewitness accounts describe him begging for mercy in broken English as terrorists beat him, his cries drowned out by the chaos. To Hamas, he was a non-Muslim intruder, an infidel. Love and mercy are not in their vocabulary.
Joshua Mollel is not the only African or Tanzanian to have been murdered amid the Hamas slaughter that day and taken into captivity. In November 2023, the body of Clemence Felix Mtenga was found by Israeli soldiers, brought to Israel with all the love and respect afforded to all hostages who have been recovered, and repatriated to Tanzania for burial. The Genesis 123 Foundation spearheaded an effort to pay last respects all the way to the Kilimanjaro region in which Mtenga was buried, and to comfort his family among the mourners of Zion and Israel. (Follow the video testimony of that powerful project HERE.)
Underscoring the common bond and that the victims of Islamic terror know no borders, President Isaac Herzog told a delegation of African Christian leaders in October 2025, “Hamas’s refusal to return Joshua’s body is a desecration, a continuation of the barbarism that has haunted my people for generations.”
Joshua’s murder reveals a broader, unifying threat and urgent call for solidarity: the scourge of Islamic terrorism that preys on Christians with equal ferocity. In sub-Saharan Africa, where Joshua’s story resonates deeply, radical Islamist groups like Boko Haram in Nigeria have razed Christian villages, slaughtering tens of thousands, sacrifices to their Islamic caliphate. In Cameroon, Fulani militants affiliated with ISIS target Christian farmers, forcing conversions or death. These atrocities, spotlighted recently by U.S. political figures decrying “Islamic terrorists committing horrible atrocities,” parallel the October 7 massacre, where Hamas invoked jihad to justify beheading babies and abducting grandmothers.
The common thread is ideological: a radical interpretation of Islam that views Jews as eternal enemies and Christians as apostates, unworthy of the protection afforded “People of the Book.” From the 1929 Hebron massacre, where Arab rioters killed 67 Jews chanting “Slaughter the Jews,” to ISIS’s 2014 genocide of Iraqi Christians and Yazidis, the playbook remains unchanged – intimidation, expulsion, extermination. Until this week, somewhere in a Gazan tunnel or sandy pit, Joshua’s body had lain alongside Israeli Jews and even a former Thai worker, a stark symbol of this convergence. As part of God’s covenantal promise which is so intricately linked to the Land and people of Israel, as one of the remaining eight hostages in Gaza, the simple truth is that Jews and Christians face a common enemy and threat under Sharia’s heel.
This shared peril forges an imperative for solidarity. Visiting Israel and the land from which his son’s lifeless body was taken hostages, Joshua’s father, Loitu, didn’t seek vengeance; he sought justice, and a proper burial under Tanzanian skies. His plea transcends borders:
“return the body, honor the dead, dismantle the networks of hate”
This plea of a father has been partly met with the body of his son Joshua being thankfully returned and honoured both in Israel and soon in Africa.
There still remains that part of the plea to “dismantle the networks of hate.”
*Feature picture: Taken hostage on October 7, 2023, Joshua Loitu Mollel murdered by Hamas and his body returned to Israel on the 5 November, 2025.
About the writer:
Jonathan Feldstein - President of the US based non-profit Genesis123 Foundation whose mission is to build bridges between Jews and Christians – is a freelance writer whose articles appear in The Jerusalem Post, Times of Israel, Townhall, NorthJersey.com, Algemeiner Jornal, The Jewish Press, major Christian websites and more.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).