Looking Forward‘Overwhelmed with joy and sadness’: Freed hostages speak publicly for first time at Tel Aviv rally
Irena Tati, a released Russian-Israeli hostage, holds a picture of her 27-year-old grandson Alexander (Sasha) Trufanov during a Saturday night demonstration in Tel Aviv. Photo by AHMAD GHARABLI / AFP
By Jodi Rudoren December 2, 2023
TEL AVIV — The word said most frequently from the stage and in the crowd of thousands gathered Saturday night in Israel’s newly renamed Hostages Square was “achshav,” Hebrew for “now.”
The emcee kept returning to a call and response where he said, “Et kulam” — “all of them” — and the masses chanted back, “achshav.” Sometimes the people just repeated the word alone, over and over, “achshav, achshav, achshav.”
“Now, this minute,” Raz Ben Ami, 57, pleaded from the podium. She was freed on Wednesday, but her husband, Ohad, who was kidnapped alongside her from Kibbutz Beeri Oct. 7, remains in captivity in Gaza. “Return them here, now.”
The rally was the first time that Ben Ami and others among the 110 hostages who have been released from Gaza spoke at a major public event, either in person or via video. They provided few glimpses into their harrowing experience. One older woman said she had been starving while in captivity, and Hadas Calderon said her two children, who were released last week, likened their experience to the video game Fortnite.
Instead, speakers focused on embodying the mixed mood that has gripped Israel since a weeklong truce ended and fighting reignited Friday morning — deep gratitude, braided with anguish and yearning. “We don’t need charity,” one said. “We need the return of all the hostages. Now and now and now.”
Calderon’s family lived in Kibbutz Nir Oz, where 180 out of 400 residents were killed or kidnapped on Oct. 7. When she reunited with her children, 16-year-old Sahar and 12-year-old Erez, she said, “Their first words to me were, ‘Mom! You’re alive! We didn’t know that you survived!”
“I am overwhelmed with joy and sadness,” she said. “A miracle happened to me. I hope that a miracle happens to all of you.
“Sahar wants her father, Erez wants his father — don’t leave the men behind,” Calderon continued, referring to her ex-husband, Ofer Calderon, who remains a hostage in Gaza. “Miracles aren’t enough. We need action. Bring them home now.”
Israeli news outlets said Saturday’s rally in Tel Aviv was the largest since the start of the war, with parallel events happening outside the prime minister’s home in Caesarea — where four protesters were arrested — and in Jerusalem, Eilat, Haifa and other cities across the country. I traveled to Hostages Square on one of some 150 buses provided by the Hostage and Missing Families Forum.
On the ride home after the rally, just after 10 p.m., a siren sounded, signaling a rocket barrage from Gaza toward Tel Aviv. The bus stopped, and as we exited, we could see and hear the Iron Dome missile defense system intercept the missile overhead.
“Shit!” one of my fellow passengers exclaimed. “Oy, oy, oy,” said another.
We stepped over a concrete barrier at the side of the highway to crouch on the rocky ground below. People’s spouses, seeing Red Alerts on their phones or news of the barrage on television, were already texting to see if they were OK.
But even before the night ended with that firsthand reminder of the dangers of war, the atmosphere on the bus, as at the rally itself, was subdued, almost somber.
The Hostage and Missing Families Forum had, early in the war, asked that people refrain from bringing the drums and noisemakers that had marked months of Saturday-night protests against the government’s proposed judicial overhaul to rallies calling for the hostages’ return. And the chants of “Busha, busha” — “shame, shame” — that punctuated those pro-democracy marches were also gone, replaced with “achshav, achshav” — “now, now.”
Except near the stage, very few people even held signs, though many wore T-shirts and dogtags with the slogan “Bring Them Home Now.” As a lineup of Israeli singers performed tunes of longing, I saw several people in the crowd put an arm around each other or lean a head on another’s shoulder.
At the rally in Caesarea, outside the prime minister’s home, Eran Litman, whose son was among the 260 people killed at an outdoor music festival on Oct. 7, said, “the hands of the Israeli government, and its leader, are covered in blood.”
“Every day that this government remains in office costs us lives!” Litman exclaimed, according to the Israeli news site Haaretz.
But in Tel Aviv, the speakers generally steered clear of politics. The sharpest comments came from Boaz Zalmanovich, whose 86-year-old father, Arye, was the oldest hostage before his death in captivity. Zalmanovich said the Israeli communities near Gaza were “abandoned” on Oct. 7, and that Israel’s government had “betrayed its contract” with the citizenry, and could only renew it by doing everything possible to bring all remaining hostages home.
Instead of political critique, there was raw emotion. A heartbreaking video played on big screens across the square, interlacing images of the children released last week with home movies of those same children playing with their fathers, who remain in captivity.
Israeli and U.S. officials have said negotiations with Hamas broke down early Friday in part over disagreements about what “price” Israel would have to pay — in terms of the number of Palestinian prisoners it would release, and the nature of their crimes — in order to secure the return of male captives.
Yelena Trufanova, 50, who was released along with her 73-year-old mother, Irena Tati, on Wednesday, spoke in both Hebrew and Russian. Her husband, Vitaly, was killed by Hamas at Kibbutz Nir Oz on Oct. 7, and their son, Sasha, an engineer who works for Amazon, remains in Gaza.
“I am Sasha Trufanov’s mother, and I stand here thankful and moved,” Trufanova said. “Your support has been crucial. Without it, I wouldn’t be here. We must now focus on bringing back my Sasha and everyone else.”
An electronic clock near the entrance to the square ticks off the seconds, minutes, hours and days since the attack began. Saturday was day 56.
The hostages were abducted on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah. This week, Hanukkah starts, and tables selling merchandise around the square now include packages of four wooden dreidels for 50 shekels, or about $13.50. The four sides of the dreidels say “Bring,” “Them,” “Home,” “Now.”
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