Freed hostages, relatives of captives and staff members work together to keep the hostage crisis at the center of the diplomatic and media discourse.
By Amelie Botbol, JNS
The 115 people being held hostage by Hamas in Gaza are the focus of activities at Tel Aviv’s “Hostage Square.” Bringing them home is a national priority for a nation devastated by Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre.
Behind the scenes of the all-out repatriation efforts is an entire grass-roots operation staffed by dozens of people, volunteers and employees. The Hostage and Missing Families Forum headquarters is housed on Leonardo da Vinci Street in Tel Aviv in an office building donated by Checkpoint Technologies.
Freed hostages, relatives of captives and staff members work together to keep the hostage crisis at the center of the diplomatic and media discourse, in a compound where every desk and every wall is filled with memorabilia of those who haven’t yet returned.
Each team member has had to put his or her personal life partially on hold to devote their time nearly exclusively to the hostage crisis.
Integral to getting the message out and rallying global support for the cause is the foreign press team, which met us at the entrance of the forum and introduced us to key figures, including Dudi Zalmanovich.
On Oct. 7, Zalmanovich, a founding member of the forum, was trying to locate his daughter in the aftermath of the Supernova music festival massacre (she survived), as well as his wife’s nephew Omer Shemtov, who it later turned out was a hostage in Gaza.
Together with the rest of Shemtov’s family, Zalmanovich initiated the formation of the forum at noon on Oct. 7. “I started reaching out to my contacts, I have a lot of connections and background in the army, including people who dealt with past hostage crises. We all met the next day,” he said.
The first meeting was in the basement of Shelly Shemtov, Omer’s mother. About 1,400 families were involved at the time.
“Our main objective is to bring back the hostages. We succeeded in 40% of our mission, but the easier 40%. The tougher part is ahead of us,” he said.
In support of that goal, Zalmanovich felt it was necessary to provide the families with a place to gather and support each other. Nearly 10 months into the war, he said he felt that the forum had been 100% successful in preventing families from feeling isolated and alone.
“We are also working on providing financial support to the families and returning hostages so that they can heal,” he said.
The forum has so far raised close to $40 million from philanthropic funds, mostly from America, according to Rebecca Shafrir, the head of the forum’s fundraising department. Shafrir told us that the forum aims to raise $5 million per month in the coming months.
“International foundations committed to Israel donated close to $2 million in the first days,” she said. “Israeli companies like Bank Hapoalim have also been strong supporters of our cause,” she added.
Walking down a hallway on the fifth floor, we encountered ex-captives Almog Jan Meir and Luis Har, who were rescued by the Israeli military in separate operations and are actively involved in the repatriation struggle.
“Some of the returning hostages try to support the forum in every way needed, they are goal-oriented and put aside all that they went through, while others need more emotional support,” Ran Peled, the head of the emotional support department, told JNS.
“We have units that give in-house therapy,” he said, adding that the families need to be in active mode while processing what they are going through.
The forum team comprises fewer than 100 employees with nearly 2,000 volunteers.
During our visit, Hagai Levine, head of the forum’s medical team, invited us to accompany him to the nearby “Hostage Square,” where a blood donation event was organized in memory of Lior Rudaeff, who was killed on Oct. 7 and whose remains are held by Hamas in Gaza.
“Returning hostages and families feel that they are not entitled to take care of themselves as long as others are there,” Levine told JNS.
“When they return, they seem OK, but suddenly they can find themselves having trouble with their experience, they can suddenly remember something they did not remember before about the horror that they have been through and it can lead to a breakdown,” he added.
“We are thinking of doing a systematic study with questionnaires asking about their sleep and assessing the difficulties they have but to do so, we need donations,” he continued.
“I first came to the forum on Oct. 17; the families of the victims were part of running this place from day one,” Daniel Lifshitz, head of the Arab desk at the forum, told JNS.
Lifshitz’s grandparents were kidnapped from Nir Oz on Oct. 7. His grandmother Yocheved, 85, was released by Hamas on Oct. 23. He has since been campaigning to free his grandfather Oded, who turned 84 in captivity.
Volunteers make yellow ribbon pins. Credit: The Hostage and Missing Families Forum.
In New York, Lifshitz met the Qatari ambassador to the United Nations. He developed relations with Arab leaders and opened the Arab desk at the forum, which organizes meetings with Arab leaders and gives interviews to Arabic media.
“The biggest success of this place is that the affected families, after nearly 300 days, are in a kind of normal mental situation even though their kids, parents, brothers are in Gaza,” said Lifshitz.
“The main goal is to bring them home, but the work here has a lot to do with the families as well. Making sure the hostages have someone to come back to and take care of them, finding mental and financial support, finding schools for children,” he continued.
In a world of overexposure, the forum also attempts to protect the privacy of the hostages’ families.
Balancing the need to preserve the hostages and their families while making an impact can be challenging, especially knowing that on social media some of the posts that created the most engagement are tragic images of female IDF soldiers.
“We deal with every angle of victims’ rights,” Professor Dana Pugach, head of the forum’s legal team, told JNS.
“Today, I have been busy with their right to privacy. The people who come back from captivity are seen as public property and even the government doesn’t respect their privacy,” she said.
Pugach explained that she is in the process of lodging an appeal to the Supreme Court against the government and the Israel Defense Forces, which set up a website featuring graphic pictures of the massacre. Currently, the site is only accessible outside of Israel. However, this could change.
“We think this would harm the families because it would expose them even more. These pictures were taken from Hamas footage. We asked the Supreme Court to ensure the consent of the families before images are published,” said Pugach.
Conversely, the forum’s special projects department is using approved images in partnership with Ziv Koren, an Israeli photojournalist, to put together a book of exclusive images from the war. The book should be available for purchase in September. The proceeds will go to the families of hostages.
“What would we do without the forum? It’s the only place where we can come and feel very comfortable about all the crazy things we’re going through, because everyone understands us,” summed up Lifshitz.
“Those who work and volunteer with us become like the families of the hostages. They absorb what we are going through. Even as they leave the forum, they keep feeling strongly about it. They could work somewhere else, but for what? Bringing back the hostages is the top issue in the world today. What will we do if they don’t return?” he asked.