In the Media

Australian Jewish News – 27 February 2025

Sunday, January 19, 2025, is a day that will be forever seared in my memory. I, and my 19-year-old daughter (who had been living in Israel), spent most of the afternoon and evening with a crowd of thousands at Hostages Square in Tel Aviv, anxiously waiting the first release under the 2025 ceasefire deal. It had been 471 days since the mass pogrom of October 7, and that many days that Emily Damari, Romi Gonen and Doron Steinbrecher had been held in the dungeons of Gaza.   

We arrived just before the hostages’ slated release time. This wasn’t my first visit to Hostages Square, as it is colloquially known – the quasi-pilgrimage site at the base of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art – but this time it had a tangibly different energy than previous visits. Anxiety and distrust for Hamas’ promises were one element, but there was also a sense of hope that grew with the burgeoning crowds.  

This past week, after riding the highs and lows of 27 other hostages being released, came the dreaded news, and the return of slain hostage bodies, including little Kfir and Ariel Bibas, abducted from their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz with their mother Shiri. And that sense of promise has all but evaporated.

Hamas’ unspeakable long-range strategy, and carefully curated plans, have evolved before our eyes. From the drip-feed of videos on social media, to faking deaths of hostages such as the now-freed hostage Daniella Gilboa, to the bizarre dystopian release ceremonies that have become a sad weekly Shabbat fixture that many of us can only watch with one eye open.

The macabre release parades, devolved week on week, hinting further disaster. According to the hostages’ testimonies, the release day caused “the most frightening moments of all.”  

The week ending February 15 saw the horrific “hostage release show” set up in Khan Yunis, with the ghouls in new costumes, and PIJ and even PLO flags seen along with Hamas paraphernalia. 

Everyone was still reeling from the devastating images of the previous week, when hostages, Ohad Ben Ami, Eli Sharabi and Or Levy were paraded like living skeletons, needing help to move across the stage. 

And when we thought that Hamas had hit the bottom of its pit of cruelty, they revealed a new catalogue of inhumanities. Locking coffins, delivering the wrong bodies, and on Saturday bringing two Israeli hostages along to watch the release, and filming them begging to be saved.

Hostage-taking is a vile practice, and has sadly tormented Israel’s collective psyche throughout its history. Last century, there was the 1972 Munich Olympic attack, and multiple plane hijackings by terrorists, including the dramatic story of the 94 Air France passengers held in Entebbe, Uganda. Until October 7, the most prominent hostage in recent times was Gilad Shalit, the young soldier taken by Hamas in 2006 and freed five years later in October 2011, in exchange for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners – including infamously, Yahya Sinwar. As it happens, I was also in Israel on the day Shalit was released. 

Shalit’s story kept me awake at night – I had no faith at the time that he could have been alive all those years. I was also ignorant about Hamas’ use of psychological warfare, but it has since been a steep learning curve, as the unconscionable tactics of Hamas’ hostage-taking reached a whole new level. Of course, these abuses contravene the Geneva Conventions, but let’s be frank, Hamas are not really Geneva Convention types. 

I have often wondered about their adherence to Islamic law – I mean aren’t these guys Islamic fundamentalists?  Surely there are guidelines in Sharia Law that disallow such utter dehumanisation, especially towards young women, the elderly and civilians? 

That sunset visit to Hostage Square on Jan. 19  seems very far away now. I recall how we watched the live feed on the giant screen and worried about how they would be transported through the threatening crowds. How at 6pm, two hours later than planned, we finally caught a glimpse of Emily, then Doron in her bright pink sweater moving through a sea of swarming, masked men, as Romi Gonen, wrapped in a polyester blazer, was bundled last into the vehicle.  I remember thinking that it felt like time was moving in slow motion and it was taking forever until we saw them secure inside the borders of Israel.

Today, it feels as though the Jewish world has aged a thousand years, in a single month. The shared buoyancy of that very first week, where we stood shoulder to shoulder hugging crying and chanting, has been replaced with a well of sorrow at the awful reality of the loss of Kfir and Ariel and Shiri.  

There has been pain and tears across the Jewish world, but as a people we will continue to do what we have always done, we will front up and wear our armour, and find a sense of collective strength – if nothing more than to be a light for the families of the fallen.

 Tammy Reznik is a Policy Analyst at the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC).