For those of us who didn’t hear the news until after Shabbat, it was an intense Saturday night. The three additional hostages, it turned out, had been released. But as we’d all become accustomed to seeing their faces on the hostages posters, the faces that we now saw when they actually left Hamas captivity were simply hard to believe.
Comparisons like these flooded Israeli social media:
The same image came to mind for everyone we spoke to — these men looked like Holocaust survivors.
Israelis were in tears. Israelis called for revenge. And then, most took a deep breath, and said, “Let’s get them all out first. Then we’ll get revenge.”
Whatever that looks like. Whatever that’s worth.
One of the three hostages released is Or Levi, who was in the same small cement shelter at the Nova festival on October 7th in which Aner Shapira and Hersh Goldberg-Polin had sought safety.
If you don’t recall the story of what unfolded there, and of Aner’s unfathomable heroism, here is the story one more time.
That is why the newscasters brought Shira Shapira, Aner’s mother, on line after Shabbat to share her reactions. Or Levi came out of captivity because her son saved his life.
After she shared her thoughts and reactions, as you can hear at the top, the three newscasters were somewhat at a loss for words.
Look very carefully at their eyes.
Every one of them was on the verge of tears, or beyond that.
And then, as Ben Caspit, one of the newscasters, put it in a line that few will soon forget:
“It’s simply shocking. But what a privilege it is to be part of this people.”
Indeed.
Part of the shock and horror of the evening stemmed from the image and story of Eli Sharabi, seen here meeting up with his family for the first time. We didn’t subtitle it, because none of the words make any difference:
if you look carefully, none of the hospital staff touches any of the hostages until the hostages specifically request that they do. It’s part of putting the now former hostages back in control. They determine who does and doesn’t touch them, and when.
The weeping in the picture above is first because Eli Sharabi had been gone for so long, because he is barely recognizable as the human being he was when he was stolen from his home. ….
… and because it is up to those people hugging him to somehow break the news that his wife and two daughters, pictured below, were killed on October 7. He had no idea. He had not heard any news at all from the outside ever since October 7, and the first thing that he said to the IDF soldiers who received him from the Red Cross was that he was anxious to see his wife and kids.
One can imagine the searing pain for even the soldiers who were told that under no circumstances were they to say anything about that.
It was a painful, enraging evening, in which the joy we all felt that three families were reunited was hugely dented by the agony that these reunions heralded, by the horrifying condition these men are in … and by our wondering — since every week has gotten worse — what we’re going to see next week.
Why do 70% of Israelis support Trump’s (pie in the sky) plan to disperse the Palestinian people? Because 70% of Israelis believe that the Palestinians are hopelessly and irredeemably evil.
A nation held back tears last night, and curbed its rage.
Not too deep down, though, despite the storm of emotions, many of us resonated to what it was that Ben Caspit said, as he held back tears:
Not “even now,” but rather “especially now,” what a privilege it is to be part of this people.
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