Ella had to close off her heart to keep functioning, to
retain her dignity during the fight of her life: liberating her father from
Hamas captivity in Gaza.
As if that is not enough, Ella is also caring for her
mother, who was held hostage in Gaza for 54 days. Raz had a serious
pre-existing health condition and was denied treatment while in captivity. By
the time she was released in the hostage deal made with Hamas, her health had
deteriorated to a frightening extent.
The knowledge that Ohad, her beloved husband, is still in
Gaza does not help her heal - her beloved Ohad who proposed to her every single
day.
Now Ella wears his wedding ring on a necklace to feel him
close to her heart.
That Saturday, the Red Alert app on Lenny’s phone woke me
up. Mine is set to go off for alerts in Haifa, where we live. Alerts are now
very location-specific to avoid unnecessarily traumatizing people, but Lenny
says it’s unacceptable not to know when our people are being bombed. That’s why
his alerts are set for the entire country.
The warning of incoming missiles was going off non-stop.
Missiles from Gaza, aimed at the south and even towards the center of the
country. So many, that he turned off the alerts on the phone and turned on the TV
to see what was happening.
I assumed it was another “round” like so many others before.
Horrible but not something that meant I had to get up. But then he said: “Wake
up! Look! There are terrorists in Sderot!”
Groggily I looked at the TV and saw the now infamous image
of terrorists piled up on a white pick-up truck driving into Sderot. Six or
seven terrorists? Terrible! But they would soon be eliminated… that’s what I
and so many others thought. At the time no one understood that we had been
invaded.
I began to understand when Ella called the news station.
Ella had already been trapped for hours in the safe-room of
her house in Beeri. Frantic with worry for her parents, and because no one else
was responding to her requests for help, she called the news station, hoping
that at least there, she would be heard.
The invaders were in the kibbutz, butchering people, and
burning homes. Ella’s parents were messaging her, describing the terrorists'
rampage in their neighborhood, their home, breaking into their safe-room and
then… silence.
And then Ella saw her father’s image on a Gazan news site,
being dragged into Gaza in a t-shirt and boxer shorts.
Ella told Danny Kushmaro, the newscaster, that her father
had been taken hostage, to Gaza. Shocked, he carefully tried to clarify the
details of what was happening. It was incomprehensible to imagine that this was
happening.
“How old are you?”
“23. My father was taken hostage to Gaza.”
“Are you sure? How do you know?”
It was Ella who explained to the reporters and to all of
Israel that not only were our people being slaughtered but that they were also
being taken hostage.
The first time I met Ella was in the Knesset. She had come
with many other family members of the hostages to explain to the Members of
Knesset what they needed and ask for their help. This has unfortunately become
a heart-wrenching weekly ritual because the hostages are still not home.
Exhausted but with great dignity, Ella told the MK’s and
everyone else listening, most of whom were at least double her age that the chasm
between the processes set in place to help victims of terrorism and the reality
she is forced to deal with.
“Yes, I know there are ways for victims of terrorism to
get help but there is a lot of paperwork to fill out. I can’t focus on forms. I
can’t think about what happened to me... I was trapped for 15 hours and evacuated under fire. I had to
walk over bodies. I was almost killed three times… but my mother is sick, and
my father is still in Gaza.”
Ella isn’t alone. She has two sisters, her mother, extended
family. She has her friends and a new family – the children, brothers, and
sisters of other hostages. They credit her with many of the ideas on how to
keep the hostages in the public eye. They find themselves looking to her, for
ideas and motivation because although she is younger than them, she is a
natural-born leader.
And that is just the thing – she’s not alone but what
23-year-old wants to lead this terrible battle? All she wants is to have her
father back. Only then her family be able to begin to heal. Only then will she
allow herself to think about herself.
Only when her father comes home Ella will she be able to
begin imagining a future. What place she will be able to call home? Be’eri
where she grew up and was happy? The place where she had to step over bodies,
run past burned cars, and breathe the stench of death? Where every path, every
house is a reminder of friends and neighbors who are supposed to be there and
are not? How will she create her own family, knowing that the State didn’t
succeed in protecting hers or even, after this disaster occurred, succeed in
fixing the problem?
We have to fix this.
Liberating Ella’s father isn’t enough. Every hostage is more
than their individual story, more even than their family left behind, sick with
worry or broken by grief. The Nation of Israel is one family. We argue and we
don’t always like each other but we are still family.
Every living hostage must be liberated. Our dead must be
buried. Our future must be protected. We must prove to the world that we meant
it when we said NEVER AGAIN. If we do not, this will happen again and again and
again. Our enemies promised us that.
Every day is October 7th until we fix this.
I wish I could lift the burden from Ella’s shoulders.
It was her words that began this war for me. I hope for the
day that I will hear her say words that prove we are on the right track, words
that will give us all hope: “My father is home. The hostages are home.”
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