‘We won’t close our eyes until they are all home’
Dateline: Tuesday 15th October – Tel Aviv, outside the Museum of Art
Seven months have gone by since our last visit to Hostage Square. The grim counter is showing 374 days… and counting. There is no end in sight for the hostages’ and their families’ nightmares.
It is 5.00 pm, and the Square is eerily quiet. The mood is quite different from our last visit in March. Gone are most of the works of art and gone too, it seems, are people. There is an air of weary fatigue; the country’s attention is focused on many places other than the torture tunnels of terror in Gaza. But creativity is still alive and well in the Square; the long table with seats for each of the hostages is now situated inside a Sukkah.
By chance we happen to arrive as a significant media event, ‘Starting Watch’, is unfolding in the Square, an occasion which will grant us the opportunity to meet with family members of Belmont Synagogue’s adopted hostage, Liri Albag. Camera crews from i24 and online news channels are in evidence. A group of young women in yellow T-shirts emblazoned in Hebrew with legends like, ‘We won’t close our eyes until they are all home’ and ‘Once an Observer, always an Observer’ is gathering in a part of the Square around five computer screens representing observer stations, each of which are labelled with the names of Liri and her four comrades: Agam Berger, Daniela Gilboa, Karina Ariev and Naama Levy.
These were the young women (Liri, 18 years old at the time, was in her first week of active service) who were on the starting watch at 6.30 am on 7th October 2023 on the Nahal Oz base from where they were snatched by the terrorists of Hamas. They were last seen four months ago in the infamous video filmed by the terrorists and subsequently released with the consent of the families. The whereabouts of the five are unknown, but the state of mind of their loved ones is not; it is one of perpetual trauma.
The installation is set up to demonstrate what these observers saw and heard on that fateful morning. The observers have four-hour shifts during which time they must never take their eyes off the screen. From the perimeter, we the spectators observe the acting observers, accompanied by the actual recorded sounds of the on-duty observers’ increasingly tense interchanges with other comrades. Serving and former observers are in the seats of the five, and as they rotate, others are invited to take their places. My wife takes the seat of Liri, and later Liri’s mother Shira and sister Shay take their turns for a brief period. Naama Levy’s father also participates in his daughter’s place. One can only imagine what they and other family members are feeling as they scan the screen in front of them and listen to the frantic words of their loved ones’ last moments of freedom.
Afterwards we are introduced to Shay and her older sister Roni, and we give them messages from, around forty which were sent to us in the 24 hours before our visit, including several video messages, together with a gift from Belmont’s members of some delicacies for Sukkot. A small token of our Shul’s affection and love for Liri and her family whom we have embraced for the past year, which is warmly appreciated by them.
We exchange hugs, including with Shira for whom words are impossible; she is overwhelmed by the experience of sitting at Liri’s post and imagining those last terrifying moments before her freedom is brutally taken away from her.
We took away one overriding thought in addition to their thanks for our community’s constant support. All three family members said to us that they have not given up hope, and they believe strongly that Liri is still alive. Indeed, the family will never give up believing and, knowing that we and others who are strangers to them are thinking and praying for Liri, helps them to sustain their own faith.
It is already dark as we leave Hostage Square at 6.45 pm. It has been a sobering and emotional encounter, to experience even in simulated form the very start of these young women’s ordeal, one which more than a year later shows no signs of abating any time soon. At the same time, we felt privileged to carry with us the warm-hearted wishes from our community in Belmont, London and it was humbling to witness the impact they made, not only for the family but for other supporters of theirs whom we met.
May Liri and the other 100 hostages be back home soon with their families where they deserve to be.
