For six days now, the heart misses a beat with every beat. When the list will come out. Who enters it and who stays outside. And what the hell happens to the little redheads, whose hearts go captive to them. What about Shiri, the terrified and protective mother, and what happened to the father Yarden, who bleeds in the head and is led on a motorcycle to Gaza? How Bibas is again off the list.
When will those who do on the list enter Red Cross ambulances, and what fear the crowd around them is seeking to swallow alive? The terror of the moments of delivery grows from night to night, in the face of the waves of the Gaza mob – "uninvolved" civilians, but bloodthirsty.
Here they are, who's in a wheelchair and who's in a mother's enveloping embrace. Who's on their feet with their backs straight and with a powerful look like a Kirscht grenade, and who's waving a hand in peace is staged at the command of murderers. Have they already reached Israeli hands? Now it is possible to breathe a sigh of relief, regulate the heart rate, take comfort in the living sweetness of the images of the first hugs.
Yehudit and Natalie Raanan, who were abducted by Hamas, are transferred to the Red Cross
Here is a sort of mother. In one hand she hugs 15-year-old Daphne, whose braids are woven into her hair and her headlights lie lit up again. In her other hand is Ella, an 8-year-old girl with the sweetest smile in the world. Two girls returning from hell to life without a pleasant father.
And here is Father Thomas with Emily on his lap, a girl who returned from the world of the dead, after her lovers had already eulogized her. A girl who was not lost, but whose voice was lost after she was crushed by Hamas terrorists, who stole a 9-year-old girl from her home and forced her to whisper in captivity.
And here is 4-year-old Abigail, smiling in the lap of her aunt. Her father Roy and mother Smadar were murdered before her eyes by human animals. Her sister Amalia and brother Michael managed to survive the massacre in the village of Gaza after hiding in a closet for many hours. Three orphaned Sabras, with stories belonging to dark Holocaust days.
And here is Hila Rotem Shoshani, a 13-year-old girl, in her uncle's arms. For many particularly nerve-racking hours, the second phase was delayed on Saturday night, after Hamas, contrary to its agreement not to tear mothers from their children, refused to put the mother, Raya Rotem, on the list, claiming they did not know where she was. Hila returned exposed Gaza's lies and said that her mother had been with her throughout her captivity, and had been brutally separated from her two days earlier. In the sixth stage, early Thursday morning, the mother also returned to her daughter's arms, after miraculously the lost woman was found.
Bibbs family. Father Yarden, mother Shiri and sons Ariel and Kfir, photo: courtesy of the family
And here is Hannah Katzir, another kibbutz grandmother made from the most durable materials in the world. Here, too, the enemy played with us and claimed that she was not among the living, until it became clear that even at the age of 76 it was possible to be born again, fall and get up, and again fall in the face of the news that was revealed to Hannah only upon her release: her husband Rami was murdered, and her son Elad remained kidnapped in Gaza.
And again the redheads in the headlines and on the covers of newspapers around the world. The Qassam Brigades declared that Shiri Silverman Bibas and the children, Ariel, 4, and Kfir, 10 months, were not alive. They claim to have been killed in Israeli bombings of Gaza. Is this another cruel lie to stretch our ragged nerves, abuse families and delay the continuation of the fighting? Did the Gazans dare to murder those who became the symbol of war?
Start setting conditions
The State of Israel must dispel the fog of uncertainty over the fate of the abductees and missing persons, under whose auspices Hamas abuses their families and all of us. Sooner or later we will return to the fighting in Gaza. The necessary mission to crush Hamas to the brim has not yet been completed, and there is no way in the world that we can return to life with death seekers at our side.
As we return to the battlefield, Israel must make it clear to the world that it will not hold fire until Hamas allows Red Cross representatives to visit all the hostages, soldiers and civilians. Another alternative to which Israel can agree is videos of all the abductees holding that day's newspaper, detailing their medical condition. This must be a precondition for any discussion of a ceasefire, and unlike now, a clause in the agreement, which has been crudely trampled on by Hamas.
Israel must not send a representative to negotiate a ceasefire without fulfilling this critical condition. Only this will take us out of the Hamas grip on our throats, from the need to be captive spectators in Sinwar's play of Satan. This condition will also ensure the safety and health of all abductees, and will rescue the families from the hell of uncertainty.
Holding prisoners without providing information about them and without allowing the Red Cross to visit them is a war crime. In the sea of crimes of our neighbors, the world seems to have forgotten this. We must remind him. If the fire alone does not stop, we will be forced to withhold humanitarian aid to civilians who elected Hamas, who cheer for it and who take part in war crimes. It is doubtful how many innocent adults remained in Gaza after it emerged that abductees had been held and starved in the attic of an UNRWA teacher and in the home of a Gaza doctor.
On Thursday morning, when Jerusalem is bleeding and when it is not yet clear whether there will be another beat, I still hope and pray that we will see the embrace of the Bibas family, burning with a red of vitality and joy. If we live to see such a union, it will be a missing union. Shiri's parents, Yossi and Margit Silverman, were murdered in the Nir Oz massacre. If the Bibs return – "the first Yemenite redheads," as Father Jordan calls his sons – they will forever miss the embrace of Grandpa Yossi, who bequeathed them the redhead that became a symbol.
Thanks to the home front
In our private home, the hug is not lacking. This week, the man jumped from the reserve duty in the south to the wife and children, and under the cover of the ceasefire we had three days together. Days when I finally got a respite from the 10-year-old's questions that are asked every night: when will Dad come back, when will the war end, and whether on Hanukkah we will go on a trip like we do every year.
And I don't have answers for the little one, and I just answer that it's great to have a home and that we're all safe and sound. And her eyes sparkle with tears. And without words, I recognize that she is thinking of children her age who do not have a home or a whole, healthy family.
But her father isn't sure his wife is completely healthy. He watches me worried as I obsessively gather crumbs of news on Telegram, scolds me when I get sucked into the thin capillaries of the stories. I'm anxious when I wake up while Middle Reserve kisses the third, to check on the beat and if the returning abductees have already crossed the fence.
You can't hear all the stories, watch all the videos, keep up to date with every detail. It's endless, he says, you'll collapse. Remember what Amalek did to you, I explain the effort and the struggle to memorize and remember names and faces. This is our duty as a people, it is my personal duty as a person, and certainly as a journalist.
I understand that with him it's different. Jealous that he doesn't get sucked into details because he's busy at all, with total mobilization until victory. How good for doers. How difficult it is for those sitting on the home front. Even within civil society, there are many who do and bake and send and paint and transport, but also many who are confined to the screen and addicted to scrolling on mobile.
Gathering information creates the illusion of control and action – but in practice it consumes our time and wounds our souls, the professionals warn. Maybe it's just an excuse for the weak, but in my view, fulfilling the commandment to "remember you" is also an action, certainly an attempt to conceptualize the upheavals that we go through as individuals and as a people, where the words end.
Insisting on gathering the details, not letting the names and faces become an amorphous and hollow concept of abductees or martyrs, is our life's mission as a people. But it is also what can bring us down. Because if we focus only on the individual, on the allergic child, on the wounded father, on the bleeding soldier, and do not act with national responsibility, one that takes into account the consequences of our actions for the future, we invite with our own hands the next acts of murder and kidnapping.
We've already been in this movie. We agreed to release 1,027 murderers and multi-murderers in order to redeem Gilad Shalit from captivity. We chose then in particular. We didn't face the prolonged suffering of our child, the one we forgot was actually a soldier, and we hurt at all. We brought upon ourselves the murder of thousands and the abduction of hundreds of soldiers, civilians and children. This time kids really. Children and a 10-month-old baby, all of us. The film of a lone kidnapped soldier became a series that could support Netflix for the next hundred years.
From Iron Dome to Iron Swords
Alongside our weakness in the past, what brought about the disaster of October 7 is actually our wisdom. It is customary in our provinces to boast and praise the Iron Dome, an Israeli invention that saves lives. But in my view, Iron Dome bears great responsibility for the failure. A direct wire runs between Iron Dome and Iron Swords. Cause and effect. Those who cleverly defend themselves against missiles treat only the symptoms and not the root of the disease, and in the end fall in a barbaric raid of simple weapons and faltering motorcycles.
Launching an Iron Dome interceptor against a rocket from Gaza, photo: AP
If 20 civilians were killed in every missile attack, we would cry, but we would not allow the Hamastan monster to live alongside us for 20 years. We wouldn't get used to Qassam rocket drops, not even rain, and we certainly wouldn't find ourselves drowning in a flood. We would have returned much earlier to the simple iron swords - the ones that attack the enemy, rather than protect the victim. The Americans promised us funding for more iron domes. If we want life, we must politely decline help and fill our barns with attack missiles.
Safe rooms are also not a solution, because defense as a method saves lives on a specific basis, but does not allow us to see the whole story. This week, the Knesset Interior Committee discussed a proposal by MK Erez Malul to increase the area of the safe room by 3 square meters, for toilets and showers. A stupid proposal, which will only raise the cost of apartments. A proposal that sends a terrible message to the citizens of Israel, according to which we will not gain security forever. We, our sons and grandchildren, are doomed to barricade ourselves for long days in a reinforced concrete block.
Clever technologists cannot replace man and his fortitude. If 75 years after the Israel Defense Forces was established, we found ourselves in a second war of independence, the time has come to change the name of the IDF. No longer the Israel Defense Forces, but the Israel Defense Forces. With the name change, hopefully the essence will change as well.
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