On the clear, blue-skied Saturday morning of Oct. 7, 2023, our loved ones and 245 others were brutally stolen from us by Hamas terrorists. Carmel was visiting her parents at Kibbutz Be’eri. Almog, Alexander, Eden, Hersh, and Ori had been celebrating peace and freedom at the Nova Music Festival. These six beautiful people were abducted into Gaza, several of them with critical injuries. They languished in miserable conditions for 328 days, then, on Aug. 29, were shot in the head, hands, shoulders, and elsewhere in their battered and starving bodies.
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Israeli forces found their emaciated corpses two days later in a tunnel 65 feet under a Gazan child’s bedroom. The tunnel was just over two feet wide and 5 ft. 6 in. high. It had minimal oxygen, no light, and no plumbing. Their Hamas captors executed our loved ones at point blank range, exited the tunnel, and shut a bolted door.
In captivity, Alexander, nearly six feet tall, dropped from 190 pounds to 132 pounds. Hersh, a couple inches taller, weighed just 116 pounds. Eden, 5-ft.-5, was found at 79 pounds.
It was Hamas that took our loved ones, tortured them, and pulled the triggers that murdered them. But many others failed to save them. Israeli governmental decision-makers had opportunities to reach negotiated settlements to release our loved ones and, for calculations they deemed strategic, they chose not to. These choices will be the eternal legacy of these men. But there are so many other people who could have done so much more to save them—and still others who will join them as accomplices in avoidable deaths if they stand by and allow malevolent entities to triumph over the passive words of people with power.
This is our clarion call now: There are still 101 hostages in horrific conditions in Gaza, and the time to save them is running out. Sympathetic words alone will not spare them the same fate as Almog, Alexander, Carmel, Eden, Hersh, and Ori. Now is the time for decisive, deliberate, meaningful action.
For 328 days, many of us traveled the world and met politicians, diplomats, business titans, celebrities—people with power. They made promises, nodded, held our hands, cried with us, hugged us tightly…and then failed to deliver results. Many of us circled the globe and sat with religious leaders, ambassadors in the halls of the United Nations, former Presidents and First Ladies. So many people with power in the biggest companies in the world said they would be with us until our loved ones came home alive. We held meetings, openly and discreetly, in places like Davos, Washington, Moscow, London, Sofia, Budapest, and Geneva.
Celebrities met us in secluded rooms but asked that we never acknowledge publicly that they did so; they feared losing followers. Leaders of humanitarian aid organizations, including the International Red Cross and the World Health Organization, claimed they would like to intervene but could not figure out how. Two Muslim clerics confidentially assured us, wrongly, that our loved ones would be okay because harming hostages violated Islam; but they and too many other religious leaders were publicly silent. More than one of these many people with power assured us that the hostages would survive, that their return was only a matter of time. Some said our loved ones were suffering but surely not dying.
Two hundred fifty one hostages from 39 nationalities were stolen from their lives and from the world on Oct. 7. Why did the Presidents, Prime Ministers, and Foreign Ministers of those nations never stand, arm in arm, on a global stage and demand their release? Why are the names of the 101 hostages who remain in captivity not on the nightly news in countries around the world? Where is the global outcry calling for their release? Where is the condemnation from the religious and spiritual leaders of the five faiths of the hostages still being held? Where is the economic and diplomatic pressure on Hamas and its sponsors? Why are NATO member countries and U.S. non-NATO allies continuing to operate with favored status while failing to save lives, including those of U.S. citizens? Why has the United States, the world’s strongest superpower—with leverage on all the regional players in this conflict—failed to deploy that power sufficiently and creatively to produce a hostage release and a resolution to this war?
Nefarious actors the world over are watching, learning, and planning. The implications for global security are much wider than Israel and Gaza. Humanity’s future is at stake. It’s time to use the power you have and do better.
Almog, Alexander, Carmel, Eden, Hersh and Ori are not coming back. In their memory, we implore you: Take action now to bring home their 101 brothers and sisters still in Gaza. As Rabbi Hillel famously said in ancient Jewish law, “If not now, WHEN?”
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