Hostage families: Israel has no future if we don't bring them home

THE FIGHT to bring the hostages home is becoming an increasingly political one, with some protesters calling for elections and a new government.

Amid reports of progress on negotiations for a hostage deal, hostages’ families gathered in Tel Aviv Thursday evening for a march, organized by the Women’s Protest for the Return of the Hostages, calling for a “deal now.”

Danny Elgarat is one of the family members who participated in the march, calling for the release of the hostages, including his older brother, Itzhak.

Danny Elgarat is a retired police chief-superintendent who was the commander of a station in Ashdod and was awarded a medal of service by the police commissioner. He now works as a high school teacher, and has a law degree.

Around 11:30 on the morning of October 7, Elgarat got a call from his brother, a resident of Nir Oz. “I could hear that he was very stressed, on the verge of tears,” he said. “He told me that his hand was badly hurt, that it was crushed when he tried to close the door to his safe room.”

“He didn’t realize what situation he was in until then,” he said.

Kibbutz Nir Oz after the massacre (credit: Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

Kibbutz Nir Oz after the massacre (credit: Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

Elgarat tried to coach his brother to make a tourniquet for his hand, but soon heard sounds of gunfire and shouting. “Itzik screamed into the phone, ‘Danny, it’s over. Danny, it’s over.’ and the call went dead,” he described.

Elgarat tried to reach his niece’s husband, who also lives on the kibbutz. “He told me, ‘Danny, they have thrown four grenades at me. I killed a terrorist in my living room. Whoever goes outside dies.’

“That is when I realized that this was an attack on the kibbutz like what I had seen that morning in Sderot and Netiv Ha’asara. I just couldn’t believe that the whole Gaza border area was conquered and attacked.”

Elgarat tried to use police connections to send his brother help, but to no avail. He later tracked his brother’s phone and saw that it had entered Gaza an hour after the two had spoken.

Hostages released in the temporary ceasefire in November later updated Elgarat, telling him his brother was brought to Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, where he was treated and remained until mid-November, when he was brought to the tunnels.

Hamas uses propaganda using hostage conditions as a tool against Israel

Hamas released a video around a month ago, claiming that seven hostages were killed by an IDF bombardment. Itzik was one of the hostages in the video, but there are reasons to believe that the video may not be credible, explained Elgarat. Currently, the IDF is treating Itzik as a living hostage, but the family has no idea what his status really is.

Udi Goren, whose cousin Tal Haimi was murdered and kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak, also participated in Thursday’s march. Haimi’s body is being held hostage in Gaza. He was thought to be alive in captivity, and only in December did it become clear that he had been killed on October 7.

Everything Goren does is focused on bringing the hostages home. “There is nothing that even approaches the importance” of bringing them home, he said.

Goren is a photographer and videographer by training. He also edits and lectures, and is a tour guide. “But I haven’t really done that since the seventh [of October],” he explained.

“Tal was an engineer. He was a family man,” Goren recalled. “It was important to him to be at home and with the kids, to take them to school and to come home in time to see them in the evening.

He was beloved on the kibbutz. He was a handyman who was always fixing things, and people were always calling on him to help.

“He was an incredibly loved person. He was quiet; he didn’t feel the need to stand out and to take up space. He was pleasant and humble.”

WHEN EXPLAINING why bringing the hostages home must be the top priority, both Elgarat and Goren touched on what the future of the state might hold, if the hostages are not brought back alive.

Both described a serious breach of the social contract between the State of Israel and its citizens.

“The future of the State of Israel is dependent on bringing the hostages back,” Elgarat said, explaining that every country has a contract with its citizens which stipulates that, when necessary, citizens are willing to fight and die for their country.

“Every soldier who goes to the army swears that he will give his life for his country, because he knows that if he is in a situation where he needs the country, the country will stand beside him. This isn’t a one-sided contract where only we give our lives for the country.”

“There are 133 hostages, whom the state has apparently decided to abandon, and not to uphold their side of the contract and save them,” he said.

“I don’t see how mothers will send their children to the army when they know that if something happens to their kids, they will have to go through what I am going through, and that their children will go through what the hostages are going through.

“Once the agreement is breached, society comes apart; there can be no country.

“If the hostages don’t come back, there will be no tekuma [revival] for the State of Israel.”

Goren also emphasized that failing to return the hostages would be a breach of the social contract. The fight for the hostages is “not only to keep it as a top priority,” he said.

It is “to make it clear that beyond this, if the state does not bring back the hostages, or if they all come back dead, the state is certainly not Jewish, certainly not Zionist, and certainly not fulfilling its role as the state of the Jewish people.”

GOREN AND Elgarat have both been active in the fight to bring the hostages home, and have attended numerous events and protests. Both emphasized the importance of social action to bring the hostages home.

The way in which their views on this protest differ, however, is whether or not they think this fight should be a political one that calls for elections and a new government.

Calls for Israeli elections

In the past few weeks, some hostage families have been calling for the replacement of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and for a new government, while others have been coming out against this call.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum has not called for a new government, while other organizations have, saying that the way to bring the hostages home is through new political leadership.

Thursday’s march, led by the women’s protest, was not branded as being political, with a women’s protest representative saying that the organization is “a public movement founded after October 7 whose purpose is to bring back the hostages. Our call is to create the conditions to bring the hostages home and get a deal now.”

For the first few months after October 7, Elgarat only participated in events organized by the Hostage and Missing Families Forum, but in the past month, he has started protesting with other organizations, including those calling for elections.

Seeing the government cancel cabinet meetings because of the Sabbath, the Knesset go to its recess despite the war, the negotiation delegation canceled, or sent but with limited authority to make decisions, were some of the things that pushed Elgarat to his decision to stop limiting his fight to bring home his brother to the forum’s more moderate approach.

Elgarat said he realized that the person who is really stopping a hostage deal from succeeding is the prime minister. “He prefers his government to the hostages,” he said.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir threatened Netanyahu that without the war his government will fall, he said, “so now he is giving Ben-Gvir a war to keep the government.”

“He will probably do anything to stay in control,” he added.

“After the Second Lebanon war, [Netanyahu] told [former prime minister] Ehud Olmert ‘you don’t give the captain of the Titanic another Titanic,’” he said.

“We have given this prime minister another Titanic, after October 7,” he said, adding: “I don’t see how he can safely bring us to shore; he doesn’t know how to navigate this situation.”

Goren does not participate in protests for the hostages led by organizations calling for elections or the resignation of the political leadership.

“In my opinion, everyone should do what feels right to them and do what feels most critical and relevant,” he explained. “To me personally, it is clear that nothing is more urgent and more important than returning the hostages.

“Generally, in a public struggle, you must have one clear message. My message is very clear: Bring back the hostages, yesterday. That is all. Any other message takes the focus away from that message.

“The current government is responsible for the situation and responsible to bring the hostages home,” he maintained, but added: “I don’t feel I have time to deal with a [political] process that takes months, which also isn’t in the consensus. It’s not that if there is a call to dismiss [Netanyahu], it will happen next week,” he explained. “I see no logic in putting my resources there.”

Goren is against linking the hostage fight to a political fight, but still thinks it is necessary to protest for the hostages. While everyone agrees that we must bring back the hostages, “not everyone agrees on what the priorities are, and how we should prioritize the hostages compared to the other goals of the war and other challenges that the State of Israel faces now,” he said.

Even those who do not prioritize the hostages as the first priority should be protesting right now, according to Goren.

“We are witnessing the State of Israel giving away her entire hand of cards and receiving nothing in return,” he said. “Hamas is getting whatever it wants, and we aren’t.”

“I don’t understand how this works, and I mostly don’t understand how it can be that not all Israelis are with us in the street,” he said.

“There was an attempt to paint our fight [for the hostages] as a left-wing fight when this is nonsense, but how are the people who are more militant, for whom the military goals are more important, not in the street right now?” Goren wondered.

“Those people care about the hostages as well, and here we are giving up on our military goals, and not bringing back the hostages” by pulling out IDF forces and increasing humanitarian aid, he explained, wondering how it could be that this has not brought more Israelis out in protest.

Regardless of their different opinions on the connection between calling for new leadership and successfully bringing the hostages home, both men were in the street Thursday, calling to bring the hostages back now.

The only way to help the hostage families is by taking to the streets, said Elgarat. “Come with us. Protest.”•