We refused to abandon our hostages, now we must refuse to abandon each other - opinion

This is not a time for louder voices or harsher arguments. It is a time for clearer vision.

 Hostage posters at Hostage Square in Tel Aviv (photo credit: Chen Schimmel/The Jerusalem Post)
Hostage posters at Hostage Square in Tel Aviv
(photo credit: Chen Schimmel/The Jerusalem Post)

Agam. Arbel. Gadi.

For 482 days, their names became our prayer. We carried them in our hearts, whispered them in Mi Shebeirach prayers, and pasted their faces on our walls. They were our daughters, our sisters, our brother, our father. Their absence was felt deeply - heard, seen, and known.

At the street minyan where I pray, we recite every name. After the Torah reading, we pause, and the list begins. Slowly, deliberately, each name is spoken as if to hold it, refusing to let it fall into silence. Each name is not just a person but a cry.

Because to hear a name means refusing to let it be forgotten.

Because in the Torah, redemption begins with recognition:“God heard their cries, God saw the children of Israel, and God knew.” (Shemot 2:24-25)

 Hostage posters at Hostage Square in Tel Aviv (credit: Chen Schimmel/The Jerusalem Post)Enlrage image
Hostage posters at Hostage Square in Tel Aviv (credit: Chen Schimmel/The Jerusalem Post)

They Came Home

Agam. Arbel. Gadi.

Today, after 482 days, they returned to Israel.

The streets that had carried their absence now carried their return. A nation exhaled. Strangers embraced. Families wept. It wasn’t just their loved ones waiting—it was all of us. Because we do not abandon our own. Because their pain had become our pain. Because for 482 days, we had carried them as though they were our own family, our own flesh and blood.

What Makes Us Unique

The story of our people does not begin with nationhood or revelation. It begins in Egypt—in the depths of suffering, in the rawness of human pain, in the cries that rose from bondage. Before we could become a people with purpose, we had to learn what it means to see, to hear, to know.

To see is to face suffering without turning away.


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To hear is to let the cry of another pierce your heart.

To know is to carry that pain as your own, to let it move you to act.

These are not just responses to suffering; they are the foundation of our identity, the essence of what it means to be a Jew.

The Posters

For nearly 500 days, their faces have been everywhere—on lampposts, roundabouts, bus stops, and windows. They aren’t just pictures; they are cries.

We are still here. Don’t forget us. Keep waiting for us.

And it isn’t only in Israel. Across the Jewish world, those faces have been printed, shared, posted. In cities far from Israel’s borders, they appeared on walls and in public spaces, quiet sentinels of memory. For those who stopped to look, the message was unmistakable:

We do not abandon our own. We carry them until they come home.

But in many places, these posters did not stay up. They were torn down—deliberately, systematically. Not by weather or time but by hands that chose to rip them away.

At first, I thought the answer was simple: hatred. Antisemitism. The knee-jerk rejection of anything that bore the mark of the Jewish people.

But as I watched the hostages come home, I began to see the torn posters differently. They weren’t just acts of rejection. They revealed something deeper: a discomfort with what the posters demanded. There was discomfort not just with us but also with what the posters exposed about those who walked past them.

A Responsibility Too Heavy to Bear

Each poster said: Here are people who will never abandon their own.

Here is a people who carry the pain of their brothers and sisters as if it were their own.

And for those who walked past, for those who tore them down, the posters posed a quiet, unrelenting question:What do you do for those nearest to you?

It is far easier to care for the distant than for the near. It costs nothing to feel for Gaza, to post a hashtag, to voice outrage at suffering that asks for nothing in return. No responsibility. No sacrifice.

But to care for those who are close to you? To carry the weight of someone within your own community? That is harder. It demands something deeper—a commitment to see, to hear, to know the suffering right in front of you.

For us, it is not abstract. To carry one another means everything—even sending our children into battle, risking the lives of those we hold dearest because we believe no one should be left behind. This is not just a gesture; it is a covenant, one that binds us to each other with unshakable responsibility.

For some, that responsibility is unbearable, a truth too raw to face.

It isn’t just hatred that tears the posters down. It is the refusal to confront what they reveal—not about us, but about those who walk past them every day.

To see suffering is to be responsible.

To hear a cry is to let it disturb your peace.

To know pain is to act.

And in a world that has learned to turn away, that message is unbearable.

Why Has the World Learned to Turn Away?

We live in an age of distraction, where social media and endless notifications drown out what truly matters. Compassion competes with trivialities. The world whispers:

Care, but not too much. Feel, but only from a distance.

In this landscape, connection is optional, empathy is rationed, and responsibility is cast aside.

It’s not just a distraction. The culture of individualism tells us we owe nothing to anyone but ourselves. Bonds with family, neighbors, and community have frayed. Responsibility feels like a burden too heavy to bear.

It’s far easier to champion distant causes than to care for those close to home.

Seeing, hearing, and knowing in proximity—the work of true care—too often meets avoidance.

A Confrontation We Cannot Escape

This is why the posters are so unsettling. They demand more than fleeting attention. They force us to look at how we hold each other. They ask the hardest of questions:

Who do you see? Who do you hear? Who do you know?

For many, the honest answer is too difficult to face.

And so, they tear them down.

But in doing so, they only amplify the message. The posters were never just about the hostages.They were about who we are as a people.

We are the people who carry the faces, the names, the cries of those we are responsible for.

We are the people who refuse to turn away, who hold each other with unshakable commitment, no matter the cost.This is what makes us unique: we see, we hear, we know.

And even when the world tears at our message, it cannot silence the truth of who we are.

Even when the posters are ripped from walls, the truth they carry cannot be erased. It remains—not for those who would turn away, but for those who refuse to let go.

It lives in the hearts of those who hold on until the moment they come home.

A Nation Seeking to See Itself

In Israel today, amidst political and ideological divisions, we risk losing sight of something essential—our ability to truly see one another.

Too often, the shouting drowns out the cries of pain. The walls we build around our beliefs blind us to the humanity of those who think differently.

And when we lose the ability to see, hear, and know each other, we lose something much deeper than an argument—we lose the very essence of who we are.

The True Calling of This Moment

This is not a time for louder voices or harsher arguments. It is a time for clearer vision.

A time to listen—not to answer, but to understand.

A time to know—to carry the weight of each other’s pain, fears, and hopes.

Redemption begins here. It begins now.

It begins with us.