November 27th, 2023: 7th Report: Civilian Hostages Returning

 

November 27th, 2023

Dear Family and friends,

Report number seven: civilian hostages returning

 

The ceasefire began Friday morning, and the first returning hostages were expected sometime after 4pm. As I write this morning (Monday), we’ve already had three such events, all sides involved have figured out the process, and it we’ve gained confidence that it can work in spite of the inevitable bolts of Hamas psychological warfare and sadism. Moreover, we’ve learned that most of the freed hostages are returning home in reasonable physical health, with the exception of 84-year-old Elma Avraham whose condition is critical and as I write is fighting for her life. The others appear to be exhausted and malnourished, but able to walk on their own. On Friday afternoon, none of this was clear. As the media reported the beginning of the process, most of the country froze. Someone wrote “I can’t breathe” on one of our family WhatsApp lists; I think she chose her words carefully.

Shabbat began at 4pm, and we always shut down all digital devices for the next 25 hours – a practice I warmly recommend to everyone. One day a week with no news, no social networks, no screens: in significant ways, this is the best day of the week. But this time, we couldn’t bear it, so we left one screen on. There we sat, along with millions of our fellow citizens, and although we were agonizingly passive, we were all together in not being able to breath, hanging between fear and hope and more fear and tempered hope. Will anyone come back? What will they look like? Will they be able to walk? In an interesting throwback to an earlier era, the only pubic sources of information were the TV cameras. The social networks which have replaced them were irrelevant. It was like watching the first moon landing, or Anwar Saadat’s arrival at Lod Airport, or Yitzchak Rabin’s funeral. The only way to participate was by sitting together in front of the television – and we knew that everyone else was doing it with us.

It took hours. The venues were unclear, the actors unidentified: who are we seeing on the screen right now? Is that camera in Gaza? In Egypt? Are the International Red Cross cars a sign of freedom, or are they still inside Gaza? Do the hostages themselves understand what’s going on, or are they fearful of what the move really means? If they’re already in Egypt, have they yet met the first Israelis, who task is to confirm their identities? Do they know we’re all glued to our screens, not breathing, their names and faces now familiar to us all?

A few hundred regular folks from Ofakim, the nearest town, took their flags and went to an intersection the freed hostages were to pass. More than 50 people in Ofakim were murdered on October 7^th; given its distance from Gaza, none were kidnapped. They couldn’t have expected to get more than the briefest glance of the returning hostages, but the effect of their action was that the hostages saw them cheering and dancing, and knew, by then at the latest, that we were all cheering and dancing. We appreciated the time the Ofakim folks had dedicated to representing us that evening.

Not that it’s a joyous occasion, mind you. Anything but.

With the exception of dozens of Thai agricultural laborers whom Hamas kidnapped merely for their crime of being in Israel, and one dual Israeli-Russian who was taken from the Nova party, all the returning hostages are from the kibbutzim along the Gazan border. So far, not a single one of them is returning to a full family, and of course none of them will return anytime soon to the destroyed homes they left and the communities they lived in.  All of them either left behind family members in captivity, or are returning to bereaved families, or both. American citizen Avigail Idan, whose fourth birthday was a few days before her liberation, returns to the graves of both her parents, and joins two somewhat older siblings who are apparently still traumatized from the 12 hours they spent hiding in a cabinet after the murder of their parents. President Biden, still the most humane leader we have by a mile, responded to her liberation by wishing he could simply hug her; her parents never again will.  And of course, hugging by strangers is a serious no-no.

It took the IDF many hours to find its feet on October 7th. Parts of the government are still lost, almost two months later. And then there’s the miracle of a section of the Ministry of Welfare. On October 8^th Prof. Asher Ben Arye got a call from someone in the ministry who didn’t know he was vacationing in the far north of Canada looking for polar bears. Dozens of children have been kidnapped, she said, and we need to get ready for the day they come home. You run a center for treatment of abused children, and you need to get on the next plane and teach us how to treat them.

He collected a team of experts from academia, his own colleagues, and from the ministry. They looked for relevant academic literature, but found there isn’t any. Children have been kidnapped for political purposes by Boko Haram, but no-one thought to investigate; and in the Ukraine, but they haven’t yet returned home. His team pooled everything they knew and started developing a methodology. The tried to think of all possible scenarios, and began writing treatment protocols. An early demand he made was that the methodology include everybody who was likely to be involved in meeting the kidnapped in general and especially the children. IDF, Shabak, police, medical teams, social services. No-one is allowed anywhere near the returning hostages who hasn’t been trained by Ben Arye’s team.

The methodology includes instructions about who is allowed to tell the returning hostages about other family members, and at what stage. Who’s allowed to ask them what, when. Who meets them – only women, in the case of returning women. Who can touch them – no-one, without their express permission, not even to lift small children. What happens to them in the first minutes, in the first hours, in the first day. What sort of hospital do they get sent to, and what examinations will they undergo. The underlying assumption is that future traumas will be impacted by the interactions of the first day, the first week, and even the first year. Another basic principle they’ve adopted is that they don’t really know anything, and whenever real circumstances clash with theoretical preparations, the reality wins and the methodology will have to adapt.

 Ample resources have been allocated to support the returnees for as long as needed, free of cost. Government at its best, which we haven’t been seeing much of.

The professionals are suggesting we stop calling them hostages, and start calling them returnees; significantly, the word shavim has two meanings in Hebrew: returnees, and valuable. Both are apt.

I’ve accumulated material for a number of additional reports, but today I’m limiting myself to the shavim. The fact some of them are returning is the result of two pressure vectors. The first is Israel’s military pressure in Gaza. Remember that the IDF held back for a month before invading Gaza. The bombing started almost immediately, but by week three the Chief of Staff himself was publicly emphasizing that the military had completed all its preparations and was raring to go. And still the government waited. Some of this must have been a reflection of negotiations with the Americans, but there was also the hope some of the hostages would be freed; the Egyptians and Qataris were quite active in their efforts to broker an agreement. Sinwar and Hamas weren’t interested, and reportedly stopped communicating for a while even with their Qatari paymasters. The difference between late October and mid-November is that the IDF has flattened much of northern Gaza, has apparently killed thousands of Hamas fighters, and has not fallen into any of the many traps Hamas had prepared. What changed Sinwar’s mind was his military predicament, and the hope he might stop the invasion.

The second sort of pressure came from us, the Israeli populace. The government’s initial response to the massacre of October 7^th was to declare war and vow to destroy Hamas. The goal of freeing hostages was added only a few days later.  That still wasn’t the end of the matter. Last Wednesday the Cabinet had to authorize the ceasefire. Going into the meeting, the two far-right parties both said they would vote against. In their minds, the military destruction of Hamas takes priority over the obligation to bring children out of dungeons immediately, or to enable senior citizens to take their medicines. Of course, they want all the hostages to come home, but as a result of the end of Hamas, not because of any compromises.

At the end of the meeting the representatives of the settler party had changed their mind; Itamar Ben Gvir’s racist party remained adamant.

Ten days ago, there were 30,000 people demonstrating in Tel Aviv in favor of compromise; this week there were 100,000. An early indication that the pre-October mass demonstrations may be returning. Say what you will about the dynamics of negotiations, masses of Israelis on the streets insisting that the military goals don’t take priority over freeing children have played a role.

As I write these lines, Sharon Avigdori and her 12-year-old daughter Noam, having been let out of the hospital, became the first shavim to return to their real home. They were kidnapped while visiting family in Beeri, but they live in Hod Hasharon near Tel Aviv. In a previous report I mentioned the new practice of accompanying bereaved families to military cemeteries. There’s also a happy corollary. Thousands of people have converged in front of their building, waving flags and signing. There are still many hard days ahead, but this evening some of us can celebrate, and we’re all hopeful with them.

yaacov