Where hostage families and supporters gather, for comfort and protest

A week after Hamas-led terrorists stormed his kibbutz and kidnapped his wife and three young children, Avihai Brodutch planted himself on the sidewalk in front of the army headquarters in Tel Aviv with a sign with the words “My family is in Gaza” scrawled on it and said: he wouldn't budge until they were brought home.

Passersby stopped to sympathize with him and try to cheer him up. They brought him coffee, bowls of food, and clean clothes, and welcomed him into their home to wash and get some sleep.

“They were so friendly and just couldn't do enough,” said Mr. Brodutch, 42, an agricultural engineer who grew pineapples. Kibbutz Kfar Azza for the attacks on October 7. “It was Israel at its best,” he said. “There was a sense of a common destiny.”

The one-man sit-in sprang up like mushrooms in the weeks after the attacks. But the sidewalks outside the military headquarters could not hold crowds, and some people felt uncomfortable with the location, which was linked to protests against the government last year.

So the mass moved a block north to the square in front of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, where a long rectangular table for 234 people, surrounded by empty chairs, had been installed to represent the prisoners. Since about 110 hostages Back home, half the table has been reset to match the conditions of captivity they described, with half a moldy piece of pita bread on each plate and bottles of dirty water on the table instead of wine glasses.

In the months since the attacks, the square has continued to attract a steady stream of Israelis and tourists on volunteer missions seeking to support the families. But it has also become a home away from home for the parents, adult children, siblings, cousins ​​and other relatives of hostages.

Although Tel Aviv can get humid and cold in winter, many have set up tents in the square, where they often sleep, keeping company with the only other people in the world who they say can truly understand what they are experiencing: the family. members of other hostages.

“When I don't know what to do, I come here,” said Yarden Gonen, 30, who wore a white sweatshirt with a photo of her sister Romi Gonen, 23, who was shot and kidnapped in the outdoors. Nova music festival near the border with Gaza. A friend with her was murdered.

“None of us do anything remotely related to our past lives,” Yarden Gonen said. Even if she drank coffee in a cafe, she would feel bad, she said.

“If you do that, you would normalize the situation,” she said. “It would be like saying, 'This is OK, and I'm used to it.' And I don't want to do that.”

Ms. Gonen said she took comfort in the constant presence in the square of people unrelated to the hostages, such as the peace activists from Women Wage Peace who hold daily vigils from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. so that the families are not alone. a trio of women who united because of their anger at international organizations that they believe have abandoned the hostages (they carry posters that read: “Red Cross, do your job!” or “UN Women, Where Are You?”).

“When it rains and I see that they have come, it moves, because they could have stayed cozy at home,” Ms. Gonen said. “There is a feeling that they support us, that we have not been abandoned.”

Although the Israeli government has stated that freeing the hostages is one of the main objectives of the war in Gaza, the military has said that so far only a small number of individuals saved. There were three others accidentally killed by Israeli troops.

Most of the hostages have returned, including Mr. Brodutch's wife and children – were released in exchange for Palestinians held in Israeli prisonsas part of a ceasefire agreement November negotiated with Hamas.

For many of the hostage families, the biggest fear is that the government, despite its stated goal, will not prioritize the liberation of the hostages. They fear that the loss of the remaining prisoners could ultimately be seen as merely collateral damage in the bloody conflict.

Gaza's health ministry says more than 29,000 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in the area since the war began.

Many people who regularly come to Tel Aviv Square say that if Israel does not secure the release of the hostages, the country will never be the same. “We're worthless if they don't come back,” said Jemima Kronfeld, 84, who visits every Thursday. “We will have no value. We will lose what we were, the safe feeling of being at home.”

In the initial chaos after the surprise attacks, many people did not know whether their relatives – who had gone missing from the kibbutzim and the site of a rave near the Gaza border – had been tied up and dragged across the border, or killed, and many complained. that the government did not respond.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum, a grassroots group of citizens, emerged to fill the void. The group provides a wide range of services to hostage families, serving them three meals a day, providing medical, psychological and legal services and acting as an advocacy group, organizing and financing news media appearances and meetings with world leaders, as well as rallies urging the release of the hostages.

The forum collects private donations but has not received support from the Israeli government, which still does not provide families with regular updates, said Liat Bell Sommer, who left her job to lead the forum's international media relations team.

Other volunteers step in when they can.

“I just felt like I had to do something – I thought I would go crazy if I didn't play a role in this,” said Hilla Shtein, 49, from Tel Aviv, an HR manager who has visited the square several times go. set up a booth once a week where visitors can make a donation and pick up hats, sweatshirts and buttons that say “Bring them home NOW.”

The most popular items – now ubiquitous throughout Israel – are dog tags that read “Our hearts are hostage in Gaza,” in Hebrew.

“It's hard because it's really in your face when you're here,” Ms. Shtein said, adding, “But it still tugs at your heartstrings all the time.”

After reports last week that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told negotiators this not to participate Later in the talks in Cairo on a ceasefire and the return of the hostages, the forum accused the government of abandoning the prisoners. Thousands protested on Saturday evening, despite thunderstorms, calling on the government to secure their immediate return.

Those who visit the square regularly say there is always something new to see.

In January, artist Roni Levavi installed a giant 30-meter tunnel through which people can walk to experience being in a dark, enclosed space, like the tunnels in Gaza that some returning hostages have. described being held captive. Romi Gonen's dance teachers hold an open class in her honor on the square every Sunday afternoon, and friends of Carmel “Melly” Gat, 39, a hostage who is an occupational therapist and yoga instructor, hold an open yoga class every Friday morning.

There is a stand where visitors can write letters to hostages, or paint a rock if they wish, and another where mental health first aid is provided. Occasionally someone sits down and plays an Israeli pop song on a piano donated by relatives of 22-year-old Alon Ohel, a musician kidnapped from the rave, and the audience sings along.

When it is a hostage's birthday, some families commemorate the day in the square, where a symbolic high chair and birthday cake are laid out for Kfir Bibas, who would have turned 1 year old in captivity. The Israeli military said on Monday it feared for the safety of the baby and his family.

In early February, Albert

Ariel Rosenberg, 31, a marketing consultant from New York who came to Israel in January as part of a group to volunteer, said she and her fellow travelers had recently been to the square to help sort posters with photos of the hostages, dividing those who had been released and those who were no longer alive, something that was painful for the families to do.

Ms. Rosenberg said the group members return every Saturday evening to attend weekly meetings calling for the immediate release of the hostages, and often visit on other nights as well. “I'm here to testify,” Ms. Rosenberg said. “It has become holy ground.”