Leave No ONE Behind – Notes from Hostages Square
94 hostages still in Gaza. How long can we hold our breath? How long till they all come home?
Counting up, counting down… At first, we counted out the days aloud… We counted days, then weeks, then months and now over a year… We still count the days, but now we are in the throes of a new kind of countdown: Counting down the surviving hostages to come home. 101, 100, 98, 94… hoping we will be saying 90 this weekend.
A visitor to Hostages Square told me, “It’s like a cruel, insane reality show, a sick game of Survivor. How many are still alive? How many will come home to us?”

In the latest twist on a macabre social media dare, we see how long we can hold our breath, as we wait for our hostages to come home, not en masse, as they should, but in tiny groups – one by one, three by three… We count the days, we count the hostages, we count the birthdays they cannot celebrate while in captivity…
Last Sunday I stood in the crowd at Hostages Square weeping together with the hundreds of people around me. One by one we saw the miracle of resilience and resurrection: Three courageous young women emerged from the Hamas van, walking on their own two feet – a sight we had not dared to believe we would see. We watched mothers hug their daughters – mothers who had fought like lionesses all these 15 months. We saw Emily Damari raise her hand in a fingerless salute which is now emblematic of survival. Our greatest sign of hope. We cried, we hugged, we cried more.
When I first stood with Avihai Brodutch in his silent protest in October 2023, there were 251 hostages – at least as far as we knew… Most of them civilians – as far as we knew. Many women and children, many elderly, many shot and wounded – as far as we knew. As far as we knew… Sensing a pattern here? We did not know much! Many taken, many wounded, many dead… But how many? How little we knew! There was no official information coming from our government about the magnitude of this catastrophe, just as there was no official information offered to explain the calamitous failure of our security systems on October 7th.
Not surprisingly, there was no useful information provided by Hamas. Why would they share details? All they shared were horrendous kidnap videos and a flood of horrific, graphic footage of the attack, the massacre, the invasion of Israel, streamed live in order to shock and terrify us. And terrify us they did. Before we learned not to look, we were subjected to shocking spectacles we could not have imagined. Beyond any nightmare a horror film director might have dreamed up. These were scenes we thought we would never see. Scenes which we can not unsee to this day, try as we might.
Hamas’s calculated cruelty did not surprise us, though the extent of the horrific attack was a shock. What could we expect from Hamas, the avowed enemy of Israel? What could we expect from a generation of Gazans raised on hatred, kept in darkness, kept in poverty and fed only lies and loathing for us, the oppressors. Israel’s behavior over the past decades exasperated that hatred. None of us in the peace movement doubted that.
What surprised so many of us was the lack of information or help from our own side: Israel’s leadership had nothing to tell us, nothing but hawkish rhetoric. There was almost no mention of the hostages – only talk of war, destruction, revenge. There was no plan, no hint at what the government would do to rescue our hostages; no words about what the government plans to do to ensure that the calamity of Oct. 7th will not be repeated.

The very welcome ceasefire-hostage/prisoner exchange agreement (a/k/a “the deal”) finally in effect comes far too late for many of our hostages. At least 30 hostages have died in captivity. That is, we know of 30 who have been killed – by Hamas or by Israeli military action. This includes 3 hostages shot by Israeli soldiers in the horrendous incident last December. We do not know how many more hostages have been killed. We do know that 10 hostages have died just since July, when the current deal should have / could have taken effect, had it not been for Israeli political games. Time and again Bibi scuttled the deal in order to save his coalition. Yes, the deal signed last weekend is the exact same deal that was proposed by Netanyahu himself in May and was still on the table in July when Netanyahu himself torpedoed it as he acquiesced to his evil coalition partners. The list of names published by Hamas this month was the same list provided by Israel – minus the names of those who have been killed since! At least 10 precious lives lost because of Bibi’s political machinations.

And speaking of inaction… The winner is… ICRC: The International Committee of the Red Cross! Take a look at the blatant lie splashed on the front of their website: ICRC helps facilitate release??? Excuse me? The ICRC has done absolutely NOTHING to help the hostages. The ICRC basks in the publicity as they chauffeur the hostages who have languished in Hamas tunnels for 15 months with no help, no intervention, no medical aid from the ICRC. From the start of this trauma, the ICRC has refused to obtain a list of the hostages, their status, their condition… The ICRC refused to deliver – or even attempt to deliver – vital medicines to the hostages. At one meeting with hostage families, an ICRC official dared accuse a hostage family member of callousness for not putting the oppressed Gazans first!

Look at the lies in the ICRC press release of 20-JAN-25: “We are relieved that those released can be reunited with their loved ones,” said ICRC President Mirjana Spoljaric. “Ensuring their safe return and providing the necessary care at this critical moment is a great responsibility. ..”
Neutrality? Humanity? WTF? The ICRC publication, “ICRC IN ACTION” should be titled, “ICRC INACTION”. They continually choose to placate and cooperate with Hamas rather than lift a finger to help the Israeli hostages. ICRC, you are liars. You are criminally complicit in the deaths of our hostages.
Meanwhile, we, the people of Hostages Square, stand vigil and wait for our hostages to come home to us. Every single one of them is a blessing. Every single one of them is welcome into our hearts. As of today, there are 94 hostages left inside Gaza. Every single one of them must come home.