500 Days: Hostages. Joy and Fury.

A national reckoning is inevitable.

Editor’s Note: I have left the moment-to-moment coverage of the hostage releases to news organizations. That is their business. What I bring you here—and work to do always—is the tone and reality of what is really going on in Israel, behind the headlines. How we speak amongst ourselves. It is quite remarkable how the “street talk” has changed significantly since the initial releases of this new “stage” of the hostage drama - which began again on Sunday, January 19.

Fury.

For so long, so many have contained their rage and pressed on. To bring them all home. To not do anything that might undermine those efforts. All the while, there was a building undercurrent of rage. The Israeli public does not accept that this government has done everything possible to end this hostage crisis.

You can judge for yourselves. I bring you highlights of public events, private conversations, that expose what people are really thinking. As Israeli and Thai women and men have returned in recent weeks, we have learned a little more about how extensively and sadistically they have been tortured. It stops every beating heart.

Until now, information about the conditions of their captivity were withheld from the public; out of a concern that it may put those remaining in even greater danger. But today, after all this time, there is no room left for such restraint. Either they are released immediately, we now know, or they will all perish. Be murdered, slowly, cruelly, by Hamas.

And for the government to continue to tell the people—who demand a State Commission of Inquiry— that it isn’t necessary. Well, that just will not fly any longer. We have a right to know. And you are accountable to us. That’s how democracies are supposed to work.

The cold detachment—even cruelty—of government ministers is incomprehensible. I have been told by many hostage families, directly, that not a single member of the government has even bothered to phone them. Express support. Show compassion. Only when there is a shiva—the ritual 7-day mourning period for the recently deceased—do they show an interest in meeting with families. Almost no family will welcome such people into their homes in their grief; not even Prime Minister Netanyahu. As Rachel Goldberg-Polin, the mother of Hersh (who was murdered by Hamas at the end of August) said: “If you’re looking for forgiveness or to make amends, I’m not the right address.”

That’s a dignified “eff you.”

But since Sunday, January 19, when the hostages on “the list” have been coming home in “dribs and drabs” - as President Trump stated, in frustration—since then, tectonic plates have shifted in Israeli society.

Rage.

The cold detachment—even cruelty—of this government towards hostages and their families can no longer be explained away. And it is chilling.

They will continue to plug the dyke with their fingers, but a tsunami is building and will soon engulf those who try to deny the public the answers they so rightly demand.

Basic answers. Like. Where were you on the morning of October 7, Prime Minister Netanyahu? IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi? Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant? Why, in every single comment that the three of you have made to date, does your narrative begin after 6:29 am on that dark day? Not one of you has addressed what transpired up until 6:28 that morning.

You have left a vacuum, and it will be filled. In the last few weeks, as hostages return, families and others are giving interviews, unlike what we have heard and seen to date.

Yoav Gallant recently granted an audience to an Israeli newspaper as well as an American podcaster. His efforts to explain his conduct raise more questions than they answer.

Just a few days ago, a television interview with a senior member of the Israeli negotiating team who resigned in October was broadcast. This man provided specifics regarding two occasions when there was a real window of opportunity to seal a deal to bring home hostages. In his telling, the government of Israel slammed it shut. Both times. This is not some eccentric “leftist anarchist”, an insult which the government throws around to all who dare to dissent. This is the best of Israel. The salt of the earth. מלך הארץ

Today marks 502 days since October 7, 2023. And 70 hostages remain. In Hamas Hell.

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THERE’S A FURY IN THE LAND. AND IT WILL NOT BE TAMED.

I. Release

As I have done every Saturday since Sunday January 19, 2025, when the first hostages in this “stage” of releases took place, I awoke last Saturday to watch the grotesque, weekly Hamas theater show. For them it is a celebration of victory and humiliation of Israel.

For those of us on the other side of the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel, it is a ritual on which we must choke.

On Saturday, within hours of his repatriation, we learned that hostage Sasha Troufanov, 29, had been held in total isolation throughout his captivity. Alone.

A day before his release, his terrorist captors – Palestinian Islamic Jihad - published a video showing Sasha on the seashore. Fishing. Eating, casually. skipping stones. We are meant to believe that he’s been on an extended spa holiday and is in no hurry to come home.

Sasha was released around 10:30 Saturday morning – along with Iair Horn and Sagui Dekel-Chen. They were pulled and manhandled roughly by masked, armed thugs. Lined up on a crude stage festooned with propaganda slogans celebrating the ultimate destruction of Israel. Each hostage was pale, thin, expressionless. Microphones were thrust in their faces, and they were forced to thank those who had murdered their friends, family – and tortured them in captivity for 16 months – for their kindness. The three men clutched their “certificates of release” and “goody bags”, the latter containing mementoes from their time in captivity in the Gaza Strip.

What sick mind even thinks to do such a thing? What sick society celebrates these twisted gestures as being praiseworthy?

Iair Horn was entrusted with a special keepsake for Einav Zangauker, the mother of hostage Matan Zangauker. Einav has been relentless. She goes everywhere. She gets in the face of anyone. She has been ejected from Knesset Committee rooms. She has been criticized in her hometown of Ofakim, a hard-core pro-Netanyahu city that was also attacked on October 7. Einav, many feel, goes too far. She draws too much attention and is overly critical of the government. To others she is a fearless lioness.

Einav Zangauker

Back to Saturday morning.

During the time that the hostages are handed off by Hamas to the Red Cross, and then transported to a meeting point with the IDF, Israeli television stations repeat loops of family reactions to the first sightings of their loved ones. The wait for them to exit the terrorist vehicles in Gaza before ascending the steps to the stage is excruciating. Hamas regards this farce of a ceremony as a final humiliation. But in Israel, it is seen as a triumph. If they emerge alive, even walking with difficulty, their survival is what we celebrate.

While he was in captivity, Sagui’s wife, Avital, gave birth to their third daughter. In mid-January, I met with Avital in her temporary home in Karmei Gat – where many of the Nir Oz kibbutzniks now reside – to discuss her ordeal and hopes. Shortly after, Avital asked State of Tel Aviv to hold publication of the podcast until Sagui was safely home. He was on “the list”. And Avital was terrified that the smallest misstep might imperil his imminent freedom. Until that moment publicity had been seen as a way of maintaining profile. And profile, we thought, enhanced one’s chances of survival.

Until Sagui was on the list. Suddenly – and understandably – Avital feared anything that might anger Hamas and cause them to reconsider her husband’s release.

At 10:45am Israel time on Saturday, the three former hostages - Iair Horn, Sagui Dekel-Chen and Sasha Troufanov - crossed into Israeli territory. (We will tell Avital’s story very soon.)

Iair Horn was a bear of a man on October 7. Family members remarked, with humor, on his extreme weight loss. But they also noted his ghostly pallor, very serious expression and difficulty walking. A Nir Oz resident, Iair left his brother, Eitan, behind in Gaza. This long-suffering family at once celebrates the release of one while tormented by the continued captivity of the other. And all the others.

It always bears repeating that on October 7, 2023, one in four residents of Kibbutz Nir Oz were either murdered or taken hostage. The terrorists had finished their mission there by 1:30 pm on that day. “Civilian” looters scavenged whatever they could carry or drive away. The terrorists burned and murdered with abandon. Not a single IDF soldier arrived at the kibbutz until almost twelve hours after the attack had begun.

I would be remiss if I did not write about the seething rage in Israel that is, fourteen months on, barely contained. And it is directed squarely at the IDF leadership and PM Netanyahu and his government.

II. Fury

Ohad Ben Ami

In recent weeks – and particularly since the release of the five female IDF soldiers – anger and fury are words we hear more frequently.

There is one standout Israeli journalist, channel 12 anchor and reporter, Dany Cushmaro. He has developed special bonds with many of the hostage families since October 7. Cushmaro has a genuine, open demeanor. And he also happened to be on air that Saturday morning, when the calls began to come into the television studio. While the military and government leadership shut themselves off from the world in their HQ in Tel Aviv known as “The Pit”, it was Cushmaro who interacted directly with Israeli citizens suddenly in the midst of the heart of darkness.

Among those he spoke with that morning was Ella Ben Ami the 23-year-old-daughter of Ohad and Raz. Hysterical, she told Cushmaro, on air: “I need help. My father’s been kidnapped to Gaza. ”He’s been kidnapped. Taken to Gaza.”

This clip, with English translation, is a recording of the live exchange between Cushmaro and Ella Ben Ami on the morning of October 7, 2023.

Translation: Maya Naftolin

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That was the beginning of the end of October 6th Israel.

Ohad Ben Ami was released from Hamas captivity just over one week ago. His emaciated frame shocked Israel and the world. Ohad’s wife, Raz, who had also been held hostage by Hamas, did not recognize her husband when he first emerged from the Hamas vehicle almost two weeks ago.

In an interview conducted since his return from Hell, Cushmaro asked Ohad’s wife and three daughters if he was angry.

Was he ever, they replied. And then, on Saturday, a video was released in which Ohad himself made a short and sharp statement regarding his captivity. He demanded answers, which he has yet to receive.