Two years of waiting for the hostages to return has been agony - comment

When I was visiting the US recently, a relative asked me about the difficult moments I had experienced since the war began. I have been lucky in that my family has only suffered the terror of running to bomb shelters, but when I think back on the past two years, it seems to me that the most heart-wrenching experience I had was doing an interview.

The relative looked surprised that an interview had been so tough. But then I told him about the interviewee, Hen Avigdori.

It fell to me to interview Avigdori because I felt strongly that the hostages should be part of the story on every page of the paper, and so I had proposed an article about Israelis in the entertainment industry who had fallen victim to Hamas, since Israeli culture and entertainment is my main beat.

Coming up with the idea for the article was easy, but I trembled before speaking to this father and husband, who was living a nightmare, knowing that his loved ones were in the captivity of terrorists who had tortured, raped, and murdered their way across Israel’s south just a month before.

Getting his number was not difficult, and he agreed to speak to me almost immediately. This was in mid-November 2023, just as what have come to be known as “hostage families,” an expression that was unknown before the current war, were getting organized to demand the return of those taken.

I apologized to Avigdori when he came on the line, afraid that asking questions about Sharon and Noam might increase his torment, and told him I understood if he wasn’t up to it.

“Don’t apologize, I want to talk to you,” he said firmly, in English. “I want to talk about them. This is what I want to do now.”

I marveled at his sanity, and wondered – as most of us have, I think – how I would hold up were I in his place. I cannot imagine that I would have been able to face the situation with the dignity I heard in Avigdori’s voice, and the nobility of spirit we have seen from so many of the families, as well as from the released hostages, most of whom joined the fight to free the rest of the captives after the briefest of recovery periods.

While about two weeks after we spoke, Sharon and Noam were released, at the time we spoke, there had been no proof of life from either of them, and there was much contradictory information – wild rumors, even – flying around about the condition of the hostages.

He spoke about his wife and daughter thoughtfully, wanting me to understand what they were like, much the way you might eulogize someone who has passed away recently, and I heard in his voice both hope and fear. His wife is a drama therapist for people on the autism spectrum, and since I have a son on the spectrum, we were able to talk about the importance of that kind of therapy. I could hear a touch of relief in his voice at being able to speak about his wife’s profession and who she is as a person. He told me how much her pupils missed her, and how his daughter, Noam, was so very social that he had made himself a chart to keep track of all her friends.

Avigdori said he last heard from his family, several of whom were kidnapped along with Sharon and Noam, and several others of whom were murdered, on the morning of October 7, when they entered a safe room after missiles were fired from Gaza.

At around 11 on that fateful morning, Avigdori’s brother-in-law let him know they were in “big trouble,” and then Avigdori could not reach them anymore.

After that, he said, “I was going berserk, I was calling people, and no one knew anything.” Sharon and Noam were initially listed as missing following the attack. “That was two weeks of hell; it was very difficult for me,” he said. He feared they had been murdered and that their bodies had disappeared. Later, he was informed that they were among those kidnapped to Gaza.

I remember feeling in shock, almost numb, after our interview, which made the reality of the hostage crisis sink in for me, and wondered if it was this difficult for me just to talk to him, what must it be like for all the families to live through this?

I have followed him on social media since then, and a few months after his wife and daughter were released, the family posted photos from a vacation to the Alps, where Noam played in the snow. They were enjoying every moment of being together, in a remote, peaceful landscape, and I was filled with joy for them.

This family had what was, in the context of this war, a happy ending, if you can call any story that involves a child being held by terrorists for almost two months “happy.” So many other families have not been as fortunate. The Bibas children, Kfir and Ariel, are among those who never made it home, as they were murdered in Gaza, along with their mother, Shiri. Noya Dan, a 12-year-old girl on the autism spectrum, was kidnapped with her grandmother, Carmela, 80, and was initially listed as missing until their bodies were found. Noya was a Harry Potter fan, and J. K. Rowling posted a photo of her in costume as Hermione and called for her release when she was believed to be a hostage.

In the beginning, we focused on the families and the children, not knowing how big the war would become – involving Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and, of course, Iran – and how long it would last. Nor could we have anticipated the level of suffering in Gaza, and how the Gazan people would be used cruelly by Hamas to prolong the conflict, and that the terror group would murder Gazans who dissented.

In the beginning, we thought about the October 7 victims and the hostages, especially the children.

And that’s who we are thinking of now. The hostages now are adults, but they are all someone’s child. And their families, hoping to hear the best news and bracing for the worst, are standing tall as Avigdori did in our interview nearly two years ago. For that, they have earned our admiration and our support, as we wait with them, perhaps just for another day or two.