The fact that there are still 100 hostages in the tunnels of Gaza longer than a year is unfathomable. Just as shocking is the process of “normalizing” their seemingly never-ending captivity. The number of participants in demonstrations for their release is diminishing day by day. Their families are getting more and more desperate after 14 months of waiting for help from a government that has other priorities.
Even the staunchest government supporters among the families – the Tikva Forum – has expressed disillusionment with the government’s lack of strategy to expedite the release of the hostages.
Increasingly, those families are subject to verbal and physical abuse while they demonstrate at the top of their voices at intersections or sit down quietly dressed in white, expressing their inconsolable grief. Adding insult to injury, they are being evicted from Knesset committees with comments such as “Cut it short.”
The outrage and coldness surrounding the hostages
Eli Albag, father of 19-year-old hostage Liri Albag and a former staunch Likud supporter, voiced his anger at the Knesset at making the issue political and for being called a left-wing traitor while displaying his daughter’s photo. Soon after Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that returning the hostages was “not the most important thing,” Albag responded in pain, “Let them kidnap your children.”
Itzik Horan, who made aliyah from Argentina to Nir Oz and whose sons Eitan and Yair are held hostage in Gaza, cannot understand how the hostage families have suddenly become the nation’s enemies.
Adina Moshe, 72, who had been kidnapped from her home in Kibbutz Nir Oz and whose husband of 52 years, Sa’id, was killed in their home on October 7, recounts one painful episode: One night, the released hostage overheard people say that it would have been better had all the hostages died. She gathered enough strength to confront them and say, “I am one of those hostages, and Hamas did indeed murder my husband.”
Behind the numbers there are families who, as Prof. Hagai Levine, Israel’s leading public health physician, recently published in his report, are suffering from what he terms an “open wound” and a sense of utter despair. Since October 7, they have been flying all over the world to fight for the release of their loved ones.
I will never forget that deeply vulnerable look that former hostage Aviva Siegel had when I hugged her in a Manhattan synagogue last summer. Armed Hamas terrorists snatched her from her home on October 7 and thrust her into Gaza’s web of tunnels. Since her release, she has been on a mission to free her frail husband from his captivity in Gaza. Keith Siegel couldn’t even say goodbye to his mother, who recently passed away.
Einav Zangauker, the mother of Matan, who marked his 25th birthday as a hostage in Gaza on December 18, made the BBC’s list of the 100 most influential women in the world, an honor she would have gladly done without. Einav, a mother lioness, has been demonstrating week after week to bring her son home and has become a vocal critic of the government’s failure to return the hostages home. From a former supporter of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, she has become his nemesis.
Hamas recently sent out a video of her son, in which he was seen pleading to fight for his release and that of all the hostages withering away as time is running out. In response, Einav issued an emotional plea to Netanyahu to save all the hostages’ lives. She warned that history would never forgive him unless a deal to bring them all home is reached now, and not just a partial one, which would mean a death sentence for her son and the other captives.
Lior Lotan, who ran the hostage department in the IDF, published a plea to release all the hostages in one deal. He said an agreement for their release in stages would be both a strategic and moral mistake that would only strengthen Hamas.
In a tent outside the Knesset in Jerusalem, Danny Elgarat, whose brother Itzik was kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz, went on a hunger strike for 100 days – one day for each hostage. After the Six Day War, Yossi Gamzu’s song Hakotel (“The Western Wall”) became famous for the memorable line: “There are people with hearts of stone, and there are stones with a human heart.” The Jewish nation throughout the generations has been known to be a merciful people. The tenet, “All of Israel are responsible for one another,” should still hold true.
I was touched to the core when I heard an interview with Rom Berslevsky’s brother commemorating Rom’s second birthday in captivity, his 21st. He asked: “Why can’t people be more supportive of us? After all, we’re not asking for money, only an embrace.”
Shlomo Mansour, 86, was kidnapped from Kibbutz Kissufim, of which he was one of the founders. When his younger brother Moshe was asked if he had a message, he answered with this prayer: “May this month of Kislev, the month of miracles in the Jewish calendar, be the one when all the hostages are finally returned home.” Amen!■
Shoshana Tita is a journalist, scholar, and international teacher based in the US, Spain, and Israel.