Israel’s Hostage Families Feel Abandoned by Israel

Two hours later, Zin texted again, asking if she could speak to her daughters. Elyakim did not respond. This is so like Noam, Zin thought, annoyed but not too worried given the frequency of Hamas rocket attacks for the past two decades. What she did not know was that more than a thousand Hamas fighters had infiltrated Israeli border towns, killing men, women, and children and taking an estimated 200 hostages back to Gaza with them.

Then came the photograph from her sister. Dafna was sitting barefoot on a mattress on a floor in Gaza, wearing pajamas, covered in red hearts and the word “LOVE,” that were not her own. Panicking, Zin called other family members. Someone soon sent her a video from Telegram, where Hamas was posting an endless cascade of photos and videos. In the video, a Hamas fighter is using Dikla’s phone to livestream the family’s capture. “Talk with your country,” the man instructs Elyakim, whose leg is bleeding profusely. He is sitting next to Dikla, her arms wrapped tightly around Ella. “Hamas is here, in our home in Nahal Oz, and they have shot me in the leg,” Elyakim says to the camera, which then pans to show gunmen roaming the house.

In another photo posted to Telegram by Hamas, Ella is sitting on a different mattress on the floor in Gaza, across from her sister. Two of the fingers on Ella’s right hand are in a bloody bandage. Both the girls’ clothes have been changed since they left their home. Zin tried not to imagine who changed them, but horrific thoughts careened through her mind. “What are they doing to them?,” she told me she thought. “Have they raped them?”

A photo posted by Hamas on Telegram on Oct. 7 shows Dafna being held in Gaza. The Arabic caption placed over her photo reads: “They should have dressed her in a prayer robe.”

Zin is one of thousands of Israelis who are currently living in a black hole, waiting for someone to tell them where their kidnapped loved ones are, if they are dead or alive, and what is being done to bring them home. She and the rest of the hostages’ families have received no answers from Israeli authorities. Like the residents of the border towns on Oct. 7, they are fending largely for themselves. Appeals to U.S. and European officials to get involved, a petition to the U.N. for the immediate release of hostages in Gaza, desperate calls and emails to humanitarian organizations in Gaza—all have been spearheaded by the grassroots efforts of the families themselves. They have been forced to suffer the additional torment of feeling abandoned by their own government.

Now, as Israel retaliates for the most painful attack in its history, those families find themselves at the center of a national dilemma. Israelis want their leaders to eliminate Hamas, which has until now been allowed to thrive in their backyard. Yet, as Israel pounds Hamas with airstrikes, many fear that Israeli hostages could be killed in the crossfire. Hamas has long used Palestinian civilians as human shields. Now, Israelis fear their own people are being used as human shields in a new type of psychological warfare.

On Oct. 9, Israel appointed a retired brigadier general, Gal Hirsch, to serve as the government’s coordinator for kidnapped and missing Israelis, a position that had been vacant for a year. On Monday, his officed announced that notifications had been sent to the families of 199 Israelis held captive by Hamas. But there has been no public statement by any Israeli government official regarding any explicit effort to free the hostages, most of whom are women, children, and older people.

Neither the Prime Minister’s Office nor Hirsch’s office responded to requests from Foreign Policy for comment. Zin has contacted Hirsch numerous times and received no response. Dozens of other families of hostages say they, too, have heard nothing from his office.

The parents and sister of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, a 23-year-old who was kidnapped by Hamas, talk at their home in Jerusalem on Oct. 10. Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times

Many seem to have come to terms with the fact that there is only so much Israel can do. Others have not.

On Oct. 15, the seeds of a new anti-government protest were planted when a grief-stricken father camped himself outside the headquarters of the Israel Defense Forces in Tel Aviv. Sitting quietly on a folding chair with coffee and his dog, Avichai Brodutch held a small handwritten sign that read: “My family is in Gaza.” Brodutch, who survived the massacre at Kibbutz Kfar Aza but whose wife and three young children were kidnapped, vowed to stay there until the captives were brought home. Within hours, hundreds of people had joined him, posting flyers on the walls of the defense ministry with images of their loved ones and issuing tearful pleas for their leaders to wake up.

Dozens of Israelis being held by Hamas are dual citizens, including some 20 Americans. Families with foreign citizenship have been more fortunate in terms of attention they have received from their leaders. Even before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Israeli families, American families had met with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Tel Aviv on Oct. 12 and had a video call with President Joe Biden on Oct. 13. On Oct. 15, they met with five U.S. senators, including Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, in Tel Aviv.

Brooklyn-born Ruby Chen, who lives in the central city of Netanya, was one of the Americans who was in all of those meetings. The last Chen heard from his 19-year-old son, Itay, was a text message sent from his army base near Gaza on the morning of Oct. 7, saying that they were under attack and that he was going to protect himself. The next day, Chen received confirmation that his son was missing in action, after traveling to the newly established Center for the Location of Missing Persons in Lod, close to Ben Gurion Airport. “All they said is that they don’t know if he is alive or dead,” said Chen, who has still heard nothing from Israeli officials. “Basically, they said, ‘We don’t know. Go home.’”

London-based British Israelis Noam Sagi (right) and Sharon Lifschitz, whose respective parents were taken hostage from Nir Oz, attend a news conference hosted by Defend Israeli Democracy in London on Oct. 12. Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images

In contrast to the callousness displayed by Netanyahu and his government, Chen and the other American Israelis have found comfort from U.S. leaders. “We have faith in the Biden administration and the fact that this is their No. 1 priority,” Chen told me after the families’ video call with the president, which was scheduled to last 15 minutes. “After 15 minutes, one of his aides wanted to move him on to the next item on his calendar. The president looked at his aide and said, ‘Last time I checked, I’m president of the United States, and I will decide when this meeting is over.’ He wanted to hear from each and every one of us. He shared with us his personal grief and how he coped with it. He stayed on the phone with us for 90 minutes. He said, ‘There’s nothing more important for me than that you know we are on top of this.’”

Abbey Onn, an American citizen with five family members missing in Gaza, including three teenagers, said of the hourslong emotional meeting with Blinken: “He told us, as the stepson of a Holocaust survivor and the grandson of someone who fled pogroms in Ukraine, it was both a professional and personal mission to help our families. He listened to every single person around the table, never cut anyone off, and looked at all our photos and videos.”

“If only the Israeli families had this type of embrace and sympathy,” said Chen, adding that it was “mind-boggling” how foreign officials at the highest level are meeting with them yet Israeli officials are nowhere to be found.

In Kibbutz Be’eri, site of some of the worst atrocities, 11 members of one family, including three young children, were kidnapped. Some hold Austrian, Italian, and German citizenship. While their family members have managed to go to Brussels to meet with the presidents of the European Council and European Parliament and with staff at the German Embassy in Tel Aviv, they have heard nothing from Israeli leaders, let alone met with any.

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Family and friends of those taken hostage by Hamas react as they listen to speeches during a news conference in Tel Aviv, Israel, on Oct. 13.Leon Neal/Getty Images

Many Israelis fear that hostages could become collateral damage in Israel’s airstrikes on Gaza, said Shany, but that doesn’t change their belief that Hamas needs to be eradicated. Zin likewise wants Hamas eliminated even as she worries for the well-being of civilians—not just her family but all the innocents in Gaza. “The world needs to help us get out all the innocent civilians from Gaza and destroy Hamas once and for all,” she told me as she fought back tears. “We are always agreeing to cease-fires. We are treating Hamas as people. They are not people. They planned this abuse of women and children. Enough. The world needs to help us get rid of them.” Eliminating Hamas and recovering the hostages aren’t seen as contradictory goals, even if there is tension between them.

The hostage families want Israel to consider all options for releasing the hostages, including transactional negotiations with Qatar and Egypt or even Hamas—for example, by offering to restore Gaza’s supply of water, electricity, and food in exchange for the return of hostages. (From the beginning of the war, Israel has made clear to Hamas that the renewal of those services would be conditioned on the hostages’ release.)

But while the families call for Israel to pursue all avenues to bring their loved ones home, several Israeli leaders have said there will be no negotiating with Hamas. This suggests that Hamas will either need to be compelled to release the hostages unconditionally—or they will need to be coercively extracted by the Israeli military. According to Israeli media, Hamas has already offered to release two dozen women and children in exchange for 36 women and teenagers held in Israeli prisons—an offer Israel has thus far reportedly rebuffed.

A family member holds up a photo of one of the hostages along with her favorite Minnie Mouse doll during a news conference following a meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Tel Aviv on Oct. 17.Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images

The last time Israel negotiated the release of a hostage was the case of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier who was abducted from his army base by Hamas in 2006. He was freed in 2011 in exchange for more than 1,000 Palestinian security prisoners, many of them convicted of planning and perpetrating heinous attacks on Israeli targets. One of them was Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, who Israel holds responsible for the attack on Oct. 7.

There will likely never be another prisoner exchange that follows the Gilad Shalit formula. “I think there will be opposition in Israel to having any negotiations with Hamas of a diplomatic nature,” Shany said. “Any release of convicted terrorists would see a lot of opposition. Doesn’t mean it won’t happen. But a prisoner exchange would be very difficult to obtain at this time.”

This week, some of those who were thought to be among the hostages have been identified among the dead. On Thursday, Israel announced that the bodies of 80-year-old Carmela Dan and her 12-year-old autistic granddaughter Noya—cousins of Abby Onn—were found near the border fence. The partner of Zin’s ex-husband, Dikla, and her 17-year-old son Tomer, have also been declared dead, their bodies left outside the kibbutz.

Two weeks after her daughters’ capture, Zin waits in agony, wondering how they are doing, if they are still alive. Somehow, she remains hopeful. “I don’t know what the government is doing to release them, but I put my trust in the government and the army,” she told me. “I hope that when they are attacking Hamas now, they know where the hostages are and can avoid hurting them. I think they know what they are doing.”

Even after Oct. 7? I asked her.

“I am all hope,” she said, before taking a deep breath. “This is how I stay OK. It’s because of hope. I have no choice.”