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Visiting 'Hostage Square' in Tel Aviv and picking up a piece of advice along the way

Today was focused on ‘Hostage Square’ in Tel Aviv, a protest and memorial encampment set up in central Tel Aviv by hostage families and volunteers. It is an ongoing exhibition ever since the war started, and pointedly located right across the road from the IDF headquarters. There’s art, music, displays, memorials and family members on hand to talk to. And there is only one reason they are still here: they want their loved ones back. Now, or in Hebrew, achshav.

After the many failed ceasefire deals and hostage release plans you have to put yourself in the shoes of these families. It basically is like this: going to the casino every time, and every time the deck is stacked against you and you lose. And badly at that. Yet it is about your loved ones so you have no choice to go through this diabolical process that is played at the highest levels of power in our world, again and again. And you come up with naught and the suffering continues.

I had a long conversation with one of the volunteers, Camelia, about it. After me prompting what we should be doing, she told me the one thing we can and should do for the hostages is to just keep talking about them. The concern, she said, is that the world has moved or doesn’t care. Worse, many think it is another conspiracy theory or even believe the Jews had it coming anyway. The other thing she noted is to also highlight the lesser known hostages, a number of them have reached name recognition internationally, but there are many who not only languish in captivity, but in anonymity. Here is the full list and their stories. The circumstances they have to endure are gruesome and she added, “while everyone talks about the women, men get raped too”.

Camelia immigrated from Romania, served in the IDF and all of her three children are now in the army as well. She was heartbroken to share that her kids now regularly attend funerals of friends killed in action. But she added, this generation of young Israelis is so incredibly motivated, it is unbelievable the sacrifices they are willing to make. Looking around the square while we were talking I noted many school groups touring the area and engaging with other visitors and taking in the displays and artworks. Israel makes serious efforts to ground its younger ones in history, most if not all school groups are taken through the national Holocaust Memorial at Yad Vashem in exactly the same manner.

Compartmentalizing Fear

Again, Israel is not a war zone. People carry on and while all of them express sorrow and concern, they manage and focus on the tasks at hand. They compartmentalize fear. Last night for instance, my AirBnB host texted me to say that in the case of alarm - and there was reason to expect that given the IDF’s active incursions into Rafah - I should come down to their part of the house and they would take me to the nearest shelter. For a split second you think, right, and then within seconds you carry on and put any fear or concerns away and carry on with what you are doing which in my case was going to sleep. True, this does not work for everyone, but most Israelis deal with things this way and carry on much like Londoners during the Blitz in the 1940s and the IRA bombings in later years.

Life Lesson

After visiting the hostage square I walked back to the heart of the city and hit Dizengoff Square, a beautifully laid out plaza full of cafes and in the centre a large fountain. But it looked quite different from the last time that I was there, the fountain’s edges are now covered in memorials, notes, photos of those that have fallen since October 7th. It was incredibly gripping and confronting and hit even harder than the hostage square for some reason. Reading the many notes, I came upon one for Ron Yehudai who was one of the victims and it stood out for me in so many ways:

And this brought the entire day back into a clearer narrative. The world is on many levels turning its back on Israel, the war is moving slowly and painfully and the hostages are further away from freedom than ever. But the message of the dead, the lessons from history if you like, are all so clear: move on and just do it. Israelis may fear the choices facing them, but they are not turning away. Far from it. They fucking do it.