While the visuals of hostages reunited with their families will remain in our hearts for a long time, it’s important to remember that the fight for their return didn’t and doesn’t happen in a vacuum.
The families, friends, and communities of these hostages fought – and fight – tooth and nail, in the way that they found appropriate and comfortable for them, at the protests on Ayalon Highway or quietly at home, for more than 16 months.
These spirals, these waves of pain – they don’t stop and end in one family or town. They carry, they have reach, and, first and foremost, they demand empathy.
Yechiel Yehoud, the father of Arbel, delivered a message from her to the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee meeting on Monday: “I learned Arabic within one month, and I heard the terrorists who were holding me speaking happily about the division among the nation regarding the question of releasing the hostages.”
It is heartbreaking that there are examples to choose from, but one need look no further than Idit Ohel as she spoke on Channel 12 on Sunday night. This mother, who focused only on the good and refused to say a bad word about anyone – this whole time – broke down and cried on live TV.
Why? Because she got a sign of life from her 24-year-old son, Alon – who marked his second birthday in captivity on Monday. This sign of life indicates that he is in conditions that are glaringly similar to those of Or Levy, Eli Sharabi, and Ohad Ben Ami: locked in underground tunnels, starved, with no connection to the outside world and no sunlight. And what is a mother to do? And as her brothers and sisters in blood, what are we to do, other than listen?
The Death Shelter
Kidnapped from the same “death shelter” on October 7, along with Levy, were Hersh Goldberg-Polin and Eliya Cohen, who is being held under identical conditions as Ohel. Sigi, Eliya’s mother, said. “We know that they are being held in chains – from the day that they were kidnapped – which is incomprehensible.” She described it as a “punch to the gut.”
The words arvut hadadit have been thrown around a lot since October 7. Loosely translated as “a mutual guarantee,” it is the premise of equal efforts and equal returns; a promise of support, of not letting the other person go through this hell alone, because we are in this together.
This togetherness, of coming together despite differences, is something Meirav Leshem Gonen, Romi Gonen’s mother, said over the weekend. “We asked that Romi’s picture only be put up in places that are places of connection, of togetherness” throughout the fight for her return. She added that what she learned from traveling the country and speaking to different communities is that “everyone wants the hostages home,” but that the pain and danger of releasing terrorists in exchange is something that weighs heavily on a lot of people.
The fact that the cries of someone like Idit Ohel failed to penetrate the walls of the Knesset is heartbreaking every time, but it is not surprising. Just yesterday, UTJ MK Yitzhak Pindrus canceled a meeting of the Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee, after stopping hostage families from speaking, after they got a few words in. Arvut hadadit applies to the families, to the towns, and to places like Kibbutz Nir Oz, which lost 25% of its community. It should apply in the coalition, but that is a different fight.
This is a painful weight for an ordinary citizen with no personal connection. Imagine what it is like for them. To those rushing to the keyboards to call these people leftists and traitors, count to five and hold it in. These are your siblings. Where is your love, your respect, your decency that should direct you to stay silent and hold space for their pain?
One of the things that makes Israel great is its human quality. We must pull on those strings and find our way back to those roots because it seems we have forgotten what this project is all about.
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