When the Families of Israeli Hostages Help Us Heal

Washington, D.C. — “Good morning. I’m Kathryn. What’s your name?”

It was natural enough — at that awkward part of a meeting when we only know the vaguest things about one another.

I knew he had a family member who is being held by Hamas. He knew I cared enough at least to listen to him.

I wanted to put him at ease. And, of course, hear his story.

What does Ofir do, once he tells me his name? He asks me where I am from. He already had the sense that people had done more than walk out of a hotel room to meet him and the other eight families from Israel. And he was grateful. And he wanted to put me at ease.

Ofir reminded me immediately of the first time I went to Walter Reed Medical Center, to meet wounded Marines, after the wars that the 9/11 attack had ushered in. The small group of journalists were out of their comfort zones. Asking questions is the most natural thing in the world for us, and yet, in front of a Marine who has lost a limb — or two — the best questions in the world don’t seem appropriate, never mind sufficient. So, what does the Marine do? Ministers to you. There you were, supposedly doing a good deed, and it was the man who doesn’t even know you but was willing to die to protect your freedom who was consoling you.

That’s something that has happened to me and my colleagues many times during my years writing about those persecuted for their faith, among others. When we at National Review had a 50th anniversary dinner at the National Building Museum in 2005, Rush Limbaugh was a keynote speaker. He was approached by wounded warriors who had served in Afghanistan who wanted to meet him. They saw him as a leader and mentor. He felt ashamed, unworthy to be in their presence. One of the men said to him: “Mr. Limbaugh, we all have our roles.” They were grateful that he used his “talent on loan from God” — which included humor — to talk about freedom and encourage those on the front lines.

Ofir Angrest is the younger brother of Matan Angrest, who was in an Israel Defense Forces tank with three others — Itay Chen, Daniel Peretz, and Tomer Leibovitz — on October 7, 2023. They were at the Nahal Oz military base when Hamas raided it. Leibovitz, Chen, and Peretz were killed that day. Angrest was injured and unconscious when taken hostage. As a “sign of life,” the Angrests got to see a video of their loved brother and son, after 518 days in captivity, half the young man he used to be — having lost weight because of malnutrition, no doubt. In a statement shared with the world alongside the hostage video, as a plea for expedited negotiations for the hostages’ release, the family observed about their Matan: “Beyond the severe psychological state evident in the footage, his right hand is non-functional, his eyes and mouth are asymmetrical, and his nose is broken — according to testimonies from those who have returned, all due to interrogations and torture in captivity.”

I told Ofir that so many of us are praying for him, his parents, and his brother. Simone Rizkallah of the Philos Project told him about a conference we had the day before on Catholics and antisemitism. We were contrite, apologizing for past and present evil, raising an alarm and a challenge, in addition to educating. We could write books about the feedback you get in response to something like that. But, instead of counting the shekels that Israel is allegedly paying me (if you listen to knee-jerk detractors on social media) to consider Jewish men and women as human beings — even elder brothers and sisters in faith — let’s talk about the graciousness and perseverance of Ofir. He told me that he is certain that his brother can feel the prayers of people of goodwill who recoil in the face of inhumanity and aren’t shy to call out the barbarism of Hamas and the evil of antisemitism. Rizkallah, who is of Armenian Christian decent, refers to the Jewish people as fathers and mothers in faith and wants to learn all she can from the Jewish experience, giving due deference to the order of salvation history in Scripture.

Ofir’s thanksgiving for Americans taking the time to listen was joined by his father and other families. A newspaper cartoon that former hostage Eli Sharabi had handed to Donald Trump in the Oval Office recently came to mind when I heard a few of the fathers talking about some of the silence in the West — and about how painfully this hostage crisis has been drawn out. Never again. Never again. Never again. This particular cartoon depicted three Holocaust survivors, captioned by the post–World War II “Never again” refrain. The next panel showed three hostages, as emaciated as those Holocaust survivors, held by Hamas. “Again” was printed above those three — one of them a likeness of Sharabi.

When our small meeting was over, Merav Gilboa-Dalal came straight for me and gave me a great, disarming hug that communicated so much — gratitude, anger, misery, exhaustion, safety, restlessness. Her son Guy was attending his first music festival on October 7, 2023, with his older brother and friends. Big brother, Gal, escaped, but Guy remains with the terrorists. That October morning she had hugged Guy, and he had taken a selfie with her. Merav, who was in D.C. with her husband, their father, can’t wait to hug her son again. In the meantime, she thanks those of us who are doing the bare minimum — seeing her son as a human who deserves better.

May every hug between a Jew and a Christian be healing and, by some miracle, a consolation to those who are isolated in dark tunnels and have no idea if they will one day be handed over to the complicit Red Cross — or if they’ll live to see their mothers and brothers and fathers again.

This column is based on one available through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association.