Letter to Carmel Gat

Carmel.

we never met, and yet for the past ten months you became family.

I watched your brother Alon fight for your life like a lion. How he told the world about you, your special soul. How he showed pictures of you reading a book to little Geffen in the bomb shelter on October 7 to sweeten the sounds of the sirens. How he went back to the ashes of your parents’ home in Kibbutz Be’eri, along with politicians and journalists, showing them how you were kidnapped, just before he himself was kidnapped with Yarden and Geffen. How he pulled your beloved burned books out of the rubbles and brought them to Berlin, displaying them at the Bebel Square memorial of the 1933 burning of Jewish authored books by the Nazis. How, with a cake and candle, he marked your 40th birthday along with thousands of Germans at the opening of the hostage square we set up on this same site. With the most caring words a brother can find for his sister. How, along with your cousin Gil and an army of volunteers working day and night for your freedom, he organized Yoga sessions in your name from the Negev desert to Palo Alto.

The fight for your freedom has become the driving motor of all our actions to raise solidarity and support for the most humane of all quests. To bring you and the other hostages home. To free you from the bestial claws of bloodthirsty Jihadists whose rage against the Free World turned into the worst horror we Jews have suffered since the Holocaust. Cynically, they told your sister-in-law Yarden before her release that “Germany is next, you have no idea how much Hamas we have there”, when they learned about her German citizenship. Yarden is free, reunited with the family. Her return home gave us the force to continue. And Now?

Now, your memory will remain our driving motor.

We never met, but you are family to me and to thousands of people around the world who are mourning your death like that of a sister. As we mourn the deaths of the other five hostages brutally murdered along with you. And of Itay Svirsky, Shani Louk, Arbel Yehoud and all the other beautiful souls who fell victim to the terrorist rage. We will not rest until the remaining hostages are free.

To the freedom- and democracy cherishing people, I say: Our fight against the dark Jihadist evil is your fight. Our fight for freedom is your fight for freedom. The time for silence is over. The time to act is now.

Am Israel Chai.
Melody