BringThemHomeNow event Museumplein Amsterdam April 7, 2024

On October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists kidnapped hundreds of Israelis into Gaza. Currently, 133 people are still missing. What is the meaning of such a number? This concerns one hundred and thirty-three hostages, and behind each hostage lies a world of suffering. I was offered the opportunity to interview relatives of four kidnapped people at a secret location in Amsterdam, the day after the BringThemHomeNow event on Museumplein. These are their stories.

Omer Neutra

In August 2023, Lee Elazar (13) celebrated her Bat Mitzvah. The celebration was exuberantly joyous, her mother Louise Neutra shows a video with a line of dancing men. She points to one: that’s Omer. But Omer no longer dances. He has been kidnapped to Gaza, and the poster shows a picture of him taken at his niece’s Bat Mitzvah. The joy of that day has been blurred by the horror of Oct. 7.

Louise has been preparing for the interview. She has put his story in her cell phone and tries to read aloud, but it doesn’t work. Then she puts down her phone and bursts out. About Omer. Sweet, warm-hearted, caring Omer. The basketball player. Her brother’s son, grandson of her father who survived the Holocaust as a child with Tito’s partisans in Yugoslavia.

Stories upon stories, she apologizes. But she cannot tell Omer’s latest story. All she knows is that he was kidnapped. The Israeli government gave them a video showing that he was captured, but after that there is no trace. Life has come to a standstill for the Neutra family, as it came for all the families I interviewed this day.

Alexander (Sasha) Lobanov

Oxana Lobanov sits on the couch, clutching her son’s poster to her, as if that would enable her to hold him a little. Gregori sits silently next to his wife. The age of their hostage son Alexander has been adjusted on the poster; they were unable to celebrate his birthday on February 18 with him. His second son, Kai, has never seen his father. Kai was born in March 2024.

Oxana tells about that horrible day, when they were woken up by the air raid siren in Ashkelon and had to go into the shelter. They live right next to Alexander and Michal, but Alexander was not at home. He helped cater the Nova festival. Just before seven o’clock he sent his parents a short voice message, and at nine o’clock he called his wife Michal. He told her he was trying to escape to Kibbutz Be’eri with some friends.

The grandparents took shelter from the rockets with their pregnant daughter-in-law and their grandson. The bombardment was worse than anything they had ever experienced, it just kept going. It seemed inevitable that their house would be hit, and would the shelter hold? The grandparents were on the ground with little Tom (2) between them, protecting him with their bodies.

Captured

Little did they know that in the meantime Alexander hid with others in a field, and was discovered by Hamas. For eighteen days they didn’t know where he was. They looked for him in hospitals and among the bodies laid out. But one of the men who had been with Alexander in the field had escaped despite injuries. From his story it became clear that Alexander had been captured. That was the last his family heard.

Oxana tells how beloved Alexander is. He and Michal got married during the Covid-19 pandemic and only a hundred guests were allowed to attend. But as many as a thousand people came, even from northern Israel, even though they were only allowed to get out of their car and shout the Hebrew congratulations mazel tov from a distance. There are posters of Alexander everywhere in Ashkelon, and Tom asked for his abba (daddy) whenever he saw them. But now he is starting to call his grandfather abba.

Elyakim Livman

Elisha, Elyakim’s brother, is a slim young man with a beard. He recounts how he was activated as a reservist to come and assist on October 7th. He knew that his brother was working at the Nova festival and took a photo of him with him. While helping people to evacuate, he looked for his brother, but he was too late. Elyakim had helped other people to safety and had gone back to rescue more people. Then he was captured by Hamas.

“That’s what Elyakim was like,” says his sister-in-law Tzufit. She immediately corrects herself: ‘That’s what Elyakim is like.’ In all conversations, past tense and present tense alternate: fear and hope. Tzufit tells how Elyakim once tackled a group of teenagers for abusing a child. He called the police and stayed with the child to protect him. “He wants to be a lawyer,” she says, “to fight for justice.”

The last thing the family heard was a text message from Elyakim to his father. But Elisha couldn’t believe this would be the last. He was deployed to Gaza and looked for his brother there. Almost shyly, he recounts writing messages on walls: Elyakim, we are coming for you! We’re looking for you! Who knows, Elyakim might escape, who knows, someone might take a picture of such a wall and Elyakim might get to see it…

Was it so foolish to think that? No, that is the love that hopes all things.

Eliya Cohen

Eliya was also at the Nova festival, together with his girlfriend Ziv Aboud. Eliya and Ziv hid in a shelter together with others, but the Hamas terrorists found them. They threw grenades inside, and a soldier who was with the refugees managed six times to throw the grenades back before they exploded. But the seventh time things went wrong.

In the shelter, the dead and wounded lay on top of each other. Ziv lay beneath the bodies of her friends and kept quiet. Then she saw Eliya being shot in the leg and dragged away. She was injured and couldn’t even get out from under the bodies by herself. She lay powerless, waiting for hours, thinking: ‘So this is what it feels like to be dead…’

Momy, Eliya’s father, has a video on his phone and shows it. It is chaotic footage that suddenly shows an injured young man being roughly thrown into the back of a jeep. That man is Eliyah. ‘You raise your child with so much love,’ Momy says, ‘and then…’ He has no words.

He tells of Ziv’s despair. When Eliya was thrown into that jeep, he didn’t know if his girlfriend was still alive. Ziv is so scared that he worries she is dead, and she also doesn’t know if he is still alive. Nor did she know that he had already bought her a ring and was making plans to propose to her. Now she is torn between grief and hope. She has recovered physically, but her heart is broken.

War crimes

The fact that Hamas kidnapped civilians to hold them hostage is already a war crime. The fact that aid organizations are not allowed to access the hostages is another war crime. That Hamas refuses to even reveal who is still alive means torturous uncertainty for the family members. As Louise Neutra puts it: “Where is the humanity?”

Both the hostages and their relatives have been living in hell for six months. During those months, many politicians, journalists, activists and organizations pointed out to Israel possible human rights violations. It is about time that global attention is paid to these horrific human rights violations by Hamas.

The hostages must be released. It cannot be that Israel has to comply with all Hamas’ wishes, and then must wait to see if the terrorists will be so merciful as to release the Israeli citizens. Whatever agreement is discussed, the first demand should be that Hamas releases them.

Bring the hostages home!