The Hostages

The hostages of Gaza have faded from view. Except for their families, writhing in despair, they might as well have been exiled to another planet. They have been buried in their captivity since October 7, stripped to their underclothes in the tunnels beneath the rubble. At this point, their actual number is small. The majority of the remaining cohort are dead, but at least twenty or so seem to be still alive. Alive or dead, they have become disembodied, either physically extinguished or so far gone that they have passed from personhood into political abstractions.

That would appear to be the intent of their government. The Prime Minister pays them almost no attention. He walks by their families, desperate and distraught, and offers neither condolence or hope. Witkoff and Trump get more credit than he does for forcing the release of the last freed hostage, Keith Siegel, an American-Israeli. To the extent that they have a plan at all, the families make their persistent appeals not to Jerusalem but to the crew in Washington. They hope that it will treat Israel as its client state and force Netanyahu back into negotiations.

Netanyahu, of course, has refused that course. The universal judgment is that he has torpedoed negotiations, especially during the March “reassessment.” He was supposed to have moved forward toward a general cease fire, but resumed the war against what remains of Gaza. The inescapable implication is that he wants this war to continue as a means of achieving other aims. It allows him to hold his coalition intact and retain control of the current government. That, in turn, means that he can forestall a reckoning for the security failures that allowed the massacre of October 7. There is no doubt that Hamas perped the savagery and also no doubt that Israel was unprepared. That falls squarely on the shoulder of the Prime Minister, himself. He also gains a foothold in his personal legal crisis. So long as he can claim that he is fighting valiantly for the hostages, it means that he is unlikely to be sent to jail. The hostages, in other words, remain a useful tool. As long as they remain in the hands of Hamas, they allow Netanyahu to go about his business.

What may have changed this week is a shift in perception. Always savvy on the question of propaganda, Hamas released alarming footage of Evyatar David and Rom Braslavski. Both are emaciated, hollowed out. David is filmed in the act of digging. He says that he is being forced to dig his own grave. Sho’ah survivors viewing the videos this past week compared the two men to prisoners in an extermination camp. The terrifying language they use is “Muselmanner,” the code word of the Holocaust to denote those victims who have lost the last shreds of their own humanity, beaten out of them by deprivation and depravity. If you are alive to suffering, the images will stay with you forever.

And that’s my aspiration at this late date. We have no reason to hope against the release of the hostages and every reason to pray for their well-being. But for us, too, they have become abstractions. What’s worse is that for some small number, they have become a kind of justifiable sacrifice. If Israel is starving mothers and their children, let at least a few Israelis experience the same.

My earnest judgment is that both losses are intolerable, the Palestinians no less than the Israeli captives, and that among the suffering victims of this war, the hostages deserve to be thought of individually, revivified as whole and precious persons. My hope is that you will begin each day by simply reciting the names of those still living. No elaborate prayers, no grand statements of purpose, just the names of the hostages, so that they live in our imagination. If you care to join me, here is the list:

Evyatar David

Rom Braslavski

Elkana Bohbot

Matan Angrest

Edan Alexander

Avinatan Or

Yosef-Haim Ohana

Alon Ohel

Guy Gilboa-Dalal

Bipin Joshi

Ziv Berman

Gali Berman

Omri Miran

Eitan Mor

Segev Kalfon

Nimrod Cohen

Maxim Herkin

Eitan Horn

Matan Zangauker

Bar Kupershtein

David Cunio

Ariel Cunio

Tamir Nimrodi

Pinta Nattapong

May all be returned to the arms of those who love them.