By Joel Leyden
Israel News Agency / Jewish News Agency
Jerusalem, Israel — August 29, 2024 … The UJA Family Fund, established by the UJA in collaboration with the Hostage Forum, has distributed over $650,000 in financial assistance to more than 200 hostage family members. The Fund addresses critical needs that the Israeli government is unable to fulfill.
Cash grants pay for rent and groceries, alternative mental health treatments, even a car to get to and from a free the hostage’s rally. As the UJA is about to reach the end of the first year of the war, family members have been out of the workplace for months, and with many of their relatives still in Gaza, their needs are only growing. Over 200,000 Israelis are homeless, displaced and unemployed both in Israel and abroad from having to evacuate the North and South of Israel.
Ziv Sela is a case manager at the Hostage Forum. At first, she was worried about taking on this role, but those fears were quickly dispelled.
“Contrary to my fears at the beginning about the atmosphere at the Hostage Forum, I discovered that there is so much hope in this place. The families walk around here with a conviction that they will see their loved ones entering the door,” Ziv says. “They only ask others who arrive to adhere to this path as well, that this is the only way they will return. To see shattered families with faith in their eyes is very powerful.”
On the other hand, there are also days when it feels like no one can breathe.
“When they announced they recovered the bodies of Yagev Buchstav, Nadav Popllewell, Haim Perry, Alex Danzig, Yoram Metzger, and Avraham Munder, there was a feeling of suffocation, and everything overflowed.”
The hostages, taken by Hamas into Gaza, remain on Ziv’s mind during the day at work and when she leaves at night. She says that sometimes she’ll catch a glimpse of a girl sitting in the café who looks like a hostage. And when she goes to sleep, the hostages are in her dreams as well.
Due to the circumstances, the case manager position requires focus and operational abilities, as well as extraordinary sensitivity. Ziv can’t help but get emotionally invested.
But there is also living proof that things can turn around Two of the Israeli hostages who were rescued by the IDF – Almog Meir Jan and Louis Har – walk the halls of the forum, and Louis laughs loudly.
“Seeing them in the corridors, resurrected from the posters (of the hostages on the wall of the forum) we’ve become so used to – it’s something that gives us all hope.
“The hostages are not posters, they’re real people who live among us and they need to return to us. And we, from our side, must do everything, day and night, to welcome them back with the warmest embrace.”
Families of Israeli hostages demonstrated today at the Israel-Gaza border, demanding that they be released.
The event, organized by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, saw relatives with bullhorns calling out messages to their loved ones from at the border near Kibbutz Nirim.
Rachel Goldberg-Polin, mother of Hersh Goldberg-Polin shouted: “It’s Mama, Hersh. It’s day 328. We are all here, all the families of the remaining 107 hostages. Hersh, we are working day and night, and we will never stop.” Hamas abducted Goldberg-Polin, a 23-year-old dual US-Israel national, from the Nova Music Festival at Kibbutz Re’im on the morning of October 7.
“I need you to know that I am giving you now the blessing I give you every single morning when I pray for you, and every Friday night I go out on the porch, towards Gaza, and I give you the Kohanic blessing: May God bless you and keep you. May God shine His face upon you and be gracious to you,” she said.
Varda Ben Baruch called out to her son, 19-year-old Edan Alexander, “Do you hear us, Edaneleh?
Your father and mother are waiting for you in America. You came here to join the army. Be strong, we are strong for you! We love you very much and are waiting for you!”
The family last heard from him while he was manning a Gaza border position on the morning of the attack.
At least 1,200 people were murdered, and 252 Israelis and foreigners were taken hostage in the Hamas Massacre on Israeli communities near the Gaza border on October 7. Of the 103 remaining hostages, more than 30 have been declared dead. Hamas has also been holding captive two Israeli civilians since 2014 and 2015, and the bodies of two soldiers killed in 2014.
The Hostage Families Forum welcomed the rescue of Israeli Arab captive Qaid Farhan al-Qadi from Gaza by IDF troops but stressed that a deal is necessary to secure the release of the remaining hostages.
“He endured 326 days in captivity,” says the main umbrella group for family members of the hostages in a statement. “Qaid’s return home is nothing short of miraculous. However, we must remember that military operations alone cannot free the remaining 108 hostages, a negotiated deal is the only way forward.”
