Adeena Sussman’s Tel Aviv kitchen is a chef’s dream. The long marble countertop next to the stove extends out from the gas range, perfect for preparing ingredients, pouring drinks and entertaining. A set of sharp knives is held in place by a magnetic holder affixed to the wall, while another set sits in a block on the counter. A bright red juicer stands next to the window. Hebrew and English cookbooks neatly line a shelf under the coffee presses and dried pasta, as well as additional shelves around the kitchen. 

“This is my safe room,” Sussman half-jokingly tells Jewish Insider. Her actual safe room — called a mamad in Hebrew — is a floor below, used frequently during the war with Iran, in the midst of which JI visited the cookbook author last month, weeks before the release of her third book, Zariz: 100 Easy, Breezy, Tel Aviv-y Recipes, which was released on Tuesday.

“This is where I live,” Sussman said of her kitchen. “I get up in the morning, the first thing I do is come in here and make coffee and survey the fridge and decide what I’m going to cook or eat for breakfast for myself, and also just kind of commune with the space. It’s a really great place for me.”

The first sentence of the introduction of Zariz begins: “When the going gets tough, the cooking gets easy.” Sussman began writing the book in the weeks after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks, amid regular rocket fire that frequently sent Israelis, including Sussman, who made aliyah in 2016, to their shelters.

“It’s simple cooking for complicated times,” Sussman explained of the book’s origins. Nearly two and a half years after she began writing the book, “it hasn’t gotten any less complicated.”

Indeed, hours before JI was set to arrive at Sussman’s home, she sent a version of a text message that far too many Israelis sent or received during the six-week war with Iran: “There was a direct hit right near the house,” she wrote, minutes after a cluster munition struck a building in her neighborhood.

She was OK, she said, and about to head to the shuk, which had gone back to its normal lively state minutes after Israel’s Homefront Command notified Tel Avivians they could reemerge from their bomb shelters.

The shuk — an open-air market with fish, meat, produce and dairy vendors, as well as stalls selling tchotchkes, clothing and ready-to-eat food — is where Sussman does her shopping, and where she picked up the ingredients that day to make one of the dishes from Zariz: a preserved lemon, asparagus and cherry tomato orzotto (think orzo, but cooked in broth and given the risotto treatment).

The orzotto had a total preparation and cooking time of 30 minutes, and just a handful of ingredients beyond basic kitchen staples. That’s the vibe of Zariz — both the book and the Hebrew word itself: easy and agile. 

“I had this concept that I put forth for myself, everything should have 12 or fewer ingredients, and I wanted to use very minimal pots and pans,” Sussman said as she toasted the orzo in a pan. “Making simple recipes is definitely more complicated, because every ingredient and every technique and everything has to have maximum impact.”

Limiting herself to a set number of ingredients — “fewer than a ‘bat mitzvah,’” she writes in the book’s introduction — was “a very intellectual exercise,” she told JI. “I actually enjoyed having those guardrails, especially because I had very limited mental bandwidth then.”

Sussman’s books — she’s written or cowritten more than a dozen in total, including three on her own — lean into local ingredients and what’s fresh in the moment. 

“When you ask at the shuk when things are seasonally available, they respond by holiday, not by month,” she explained. “They’ll say, ‘Asparagus is between Tu B’shvat and Pesach, and rimonim (pomegranates) are Rosh Hashanah — [it’s a] very cool, very Israel-specific phenomenon.”

Many of the recipes in Zariz — like in her previous books Shabbat: Recipes and Rituals from My Table to Yours and Sababa: Fresh, Sunny Flavors From My Israeli Kitchen — lean into local ingredients familiar to Israelis, but are also easy to find at American supermarkets and specialty stores in the U.S.

“The Israeli pantry is my pantry,” she said. “Through all my books, the idea is that everyone gets familiar with this table of ingredients and that this is how I cook, and this is how I want people to cook. This is how this country cooks, and it’s multicultural, and the influences come from everywhere: Arab, Jewish, and the dozens of immigrant groups that comprise the fabric of the food here. And it’s very unique.”

That’s what she thinks many outside of Israel fail to understand about the country’s food scene — and it’s something she hopes to change. 

“The shuk itself is like a late motif of life in Israel. Like when there’s an Arab holiday, 30% of people aren’t working there,” she said. “Now I know when Coptic Easter is because I have Eritrean friends who live in the shuk who celebrate it. And same with Ramadan and related holidays.” 

The book combines local flavors with classic Western tastes: an onion dip made with labneh, guacamole with corn and schug (a spicy green sauce with origins in Yemen), a cheesy gnocchi with added heat from harissa paste.

But where Zariz differs from previous books is its focus on recipes that are faster, to account for having less time to grocery shop, prepare and cook — the reality of life for Israelis in wartime. 

“The whole idea of this book was easy things that don’t lack for flavor or depth. It’s more relevant than ever,” Sussman said. “The recipes are not stupid simple. I still want you to have all the sensory pleasures of cooking, you know, like sizzling, stirring.”

Shortly after sitting down to eat Sussman’s fresh-off-the-stove orzotto, Israel’s Homefront Command sent out an alert notifying those in central Israel, which includes Tel Aviv, of an impending Iranian missile attack. (Sussman’s mamad is, as one would expect, cozy and full of snacks.)

“The mamad is like a necessary evil,” she said. But the kitchen remains “a pleasure.”

In a time when routines are hard to come by, and when, until the implementation of the ceasefire earlier this month, plans were frequently disrupted by missile attacks, Zariz is a reminder that cooking doesn’t have to be difficult or time-consuming. 

“One of the beautiful things about cooking,” Sussman said, is that “cooking creates habits for you. The idea of having to make daily meals, you can view it as a chore, but then you can also view it as a privilege and pleasure, and also a method of self-care.”

On Oct. 10, 2023, Rachel Goldberg, an American Israeli woman from Chicago, told a roomful of reporters in Tel Aviv about her last communications — two text messages — from her son, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, that she had received three days prior.

“The first one said, ‘I love you’ and immediately at 8:11 also it said, ‘I’m sorry,’” Goldberg said. “And so I knew immediately wherever he was, it was a terrible situation.” Hersh, she would soon learn, had been kidnapped by Hamas terrorists near the Nova Music Festival and taken into Gaza.

As Goldberg spoke about the text messages, a man speaking loudly at the back of the room was shushed by someone near him. It would be among the last times anyone would try to speak over Rachel Goldberg.

She would soon become known as Rachel Goldberg-Polin, or, almost as often: Hersh’s mom. And for more than 300 days, she and her husband, Jon, traversed the globe as they worked to secure their son’s freedom from captivity in Gaza before he was killed in August 2024 by his Hamas captors. 

In the months after their son’s death, the Goldberg-Polins, who had for nearly a year been the faces of hope and persistence, became the faces of a unique kind of grief — one that they experienced in the public eye.

Goldberg-Polin recounts some of those moments in her new book, When We See You Again, a chronicle of her life before, during and after her son’s captivity and murder.

“I think people don’t know what to expect,” she told Jewish Insider days before the release of When We See You Again, which comes out on Tuesday. “I know that, because people are writing, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m so excited,’ and I’m thinking, ‘Oh gosh, you are not excited. This is, like, not a fun read.’”

When We See You Again is separated into five parts, beginning with “The Before” and “The After,” which follow the Goldberg-Polin family’s life in the U.S. and then in Israel, where they moved in 2008, through Hersh’s murder, until the final day of the shiva. 

The later parts — “Lost in The After,” “Still in The After” and “Ever After,” which comprise the majority of the book — detail Goldberg-Polin’s life as a bereaved mother navigating the world as one of what she calls “The Broken.”

“I don’t think of this book at all as a memoir or a tell-all,” she told JI. “It’s like little Tupperware of pieces of a life that was, and then figuring out a life that is, and how do you do this? How do we do this, breathing in a world where we no longer have air?”

She had started writing because she found it therapeutic. “I couldn’t bear the intensity of the suffering that I was carrying; [it] was making my knees buckle and my soul buckle,” Goldberg-Polin explained. “And I just really couldn’t shoulder it on my own, and so I was just writing.” It felt, she said, like “when you’re just drowning because there’s too much [and you have] to just get it out, to spill it out.”

Between the stories and anecdotes from the nearly 11 months she and her husband spent advocating for the release of the hostages, followed by the year of mourning after Hersh’s death, Goldberg-Polin intersperses vignettes from her childhood in Chicago, details about the family’s life as they adjusted to life in Israel and the Jewish teachings that have guided her.

She even reflects on the decision to change her last name to match her son’s, comparing it to the moment the biblical Jacob’s name was changed to Israel, after a tussle with a mysterious figure that causes him to walk with a limp for the rest of his life.

“I think of Jacob becoming Israel as I limp forward,” Goldberg-Polin writes, “noting all of the ways I, too, have been transformed, but also searching for the blessing this crisis must give me, looking for opportunities for birth and light.”

Something that has touched her in the 20 months since Hersh’s death is the vast number of people who have experienced loss who have made contact with her. 

“Since Hersh was killed, we’ve had thousands and thousands and thousands of people from all different backgrounds and all different faiths and all different brands and all different spectrums who have reached out to share their pain and not commiserate, but sort of to come together in this enterprise of the human condition of loss.”

She feels especially close to the families of the five others who were killed alongside Hersh in that tunnel in Gaza — a group of young people now referred to as the “Beautiful Six”: Eden Yerushalmi, Carmel Gat, Almog Sarusi, Alexander Lobanov and Ori Danino. When they were found after their executions, Yerushalmi’s body was leaning on Hersh’s lap.

“There are literally five families on earth who’ve walked the path we’ve walked, and I’m grateful that I know they just breathe the way I breathe, so I don’t even have to talk to them every day in order to know that they get it,” she said. “They they know my torture, they know my torment, they know my pain. They know my misery.”

As someone who spent the majority of her life as a private person, she has struggled with the fame that has come with her public fight, which often includes being recognized while out and about with her family. Sometimes it’s a wave from a stranger. Other times it’s a conversation.  

“When people do approach us and say these heartfelt, gorgeous words of comfort and connection, I am truly thankful for the benevolence,” she said. “It’s me that’s broken. It’s not them. They’re being human. I am trying to figure out how to behave in a normal way.”

“When people say, like, ‘We’re with you,’ I literally act like a crazy person. Because I am a crazy person. I’m a crazy person. I actually thought, well, I have a disorder, and what is the etymology, the root of ‘disorder’? It is ‘not in order.’ I’m not in order. You know what? Burying Hersh was out of order for me. I didn’t want that order.”

Those who know Goldberg-Polin have known since Oct. 7, 2023, not to ask her, “How are you?” (In the book, she shares that she and her father will jokingly ask the other the question and prompt them, “Lie to me,” garnering the response, “Dandy!”) 

For her, the book is the answer to that question. “This book is saying, ‘I know you don’t see it, and I really don’t blame you for not seeing it, and I didn’t see it.’ I haven’t seen it before. I’ve met people who are bereaved, who are grieving, who are suffering, who are mourning, and I didn’t say the right thing because I didn’t get it either.” 

“If someone was born blind,” she continued, “they don’t know what the color blue is, and it’s very difficult for someone who knows what the color blue is to describe it to someone who has never seen it. And the book is my attempt to describe blue. It’s my attempt to describe pain.”

“This is simply me giving over my love and my pain, and I hope that maybe people just understand me a little bit more, maybe understand people who are suffering and really in grief and mourning more, and I don’t know that it has to do anything beyond that.”

Ultimately, Goldberg-Polin said, “I think that it’s a book about two things. I think it’s about love and pain. It’s a pain-filled love story, or it’s a love-filled pain story, and that’s what the book is.”

As the Iran war continues, major U.S. airlines have extended suspensions of direct flights to Tel Aviv, upending travel plans for thousands hoping to visit Israel for Passover, when the country typically sees a surge in visitors, and beyond. 

As of Tuesday, United Airlines’ website shows direct flights from the New York region’s Newark Liberty International Airport to Israel, a route that usually operates multiple times daily, are unavailable through June 16. The only available flights from Newark to Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport are operated by Lufthansa, United’s partner, and require a layover in Frankfurt. 

Lufthansa has suspended its flights to Israel through April 9.

United’s direct flights from Israel to Chicago O’Hare and Washington Dulles International Airport, which typically each run a few times a week, are also suspended.  

The first available direct New York to Tel Aviv flight on Delta Airlines website is available June 1. When the Iran conflict initially began, Delta said it would suspend flights from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport until at least April 1. The airline had been planning to restart its Atlanta-Tel Aviv flights in April for the first time since the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks, but now has postponed those plans until Aug. 4. 

American Airlines, which has not flown directly to Israel since Oct. 7, has delayed the resumption of its service to Tel Aviv until April 23, a spokesperson for the airline told Jewish Insider on Tuesday. It also suspended operations to and from Doha, Qatar, through May 7 due to tension in the region. 

Before the conflict with Iran began, American Airlines announced plans to resume direct flights to Ben Gurion from John F. Kennedy starting on March 28, just days ahead of the Passover holiday. Tickets went on sale in October. The announcement, which made American the last of the major U.S. carriers to resume flights to Israel after Oct. 7, came weeks after Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire in the Gaza war. 

Throughout much of the war, the Israeli carrier El Al was the only reliable option for direct travel to and from the U.S., leading to a shortage of flights to meet travelers’ demands amid soaring ticket prices. 

United and Delta both briefly resumed service between Israel and the New York area for short periods in 2024 after suspending all flights on Oct. 7. Both airlines fully reinstated flights earlier this year until the Iran war started.

The Iranian regime may fall within weeks, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said during a press conference in Tel Aviv on Monday.

“We’re on the verge of eliminating the greatest state sponsor of terrorism in the region,” Graham said. “We’re in for weeks, not months.”

“President Trump is very good at making sure people don’t play him by giving them deadlines. I think you may see that now with Iran,” he added. 

Graham said that President Donald Trump is pursuing diplomacy “to find a way to end this regime diplomatically that will advance our national security interests,” while leaving the military option open.

“I think President Trump is looking to see which line will catch the biggest fish,” he added.

Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are in total agreement about how to proceed to weaken the Iranian regime, Graham said.

“There is no light between President Trump and Bibi about what to do and how to do it,” Graham said, later adding: “That’s what the president told me.” 

After their meeting at the White House last week, Netanyahu characterized Trump’s assessment of Iran negotiations as overly optimistic of the regime’s intentions, saying, “The president thinks the Iranians understand who they’re dealing with. He thinks the conditions he is setting, combined with their understanding that they made a mistake last time not reaching a deal, could bring them to agree to conditions that will allow a good deal to be reached.” 

But Netanyahu’s own view was more reserved: “I do not hide my general skepticism about the possibility of any deal with Iran.”

Graham called on the U.S. to “meet the moment” to topple the regime in Tehran. 

The senator said both that he is “hopeful that diplomacy may prevail yet,” but when asked if he thinks a diplomatic solution is possible, he noted that Iran is “prone to cheat,” and that “based on the past, no,” but he is willing to give it a chance.

He pointed out that the military option is still on the table and that “the [USS] Gerald Ford [aircraft carrier] is steaming this way. I don’t think they’re just going for better weather.”

“In the coming weeks, if we can’t find a diplomatic solution, we will engage in the great endeavor of supporting the Iranian people, demanding their freedom and the end of their oppression,” he stated.

To reach that goal, Graham said, “we have military capability second to none. There’s no more clever nation than Israel and no more powerful nation than the United States.”

Asked if he thinks a military solution could actually bring about the end of the regime, Graham said that the Iranian regime is “weak” and “will collapse with sustained pressure,” and noted that their Air Force flies planes “from the 80s.” 

“To anybody who believes the ayatollah can withstand all of this — you’re wrong,” he said.

Graham said the way to topple the regime militarily is to “kill the people who do the killing and see if the next guy wants to volunteer. … To those who want to appease: It never works. How many times could we have stopped Hitler? A bunch … The ayatollah represents evil incarnate to me.”

Graham acknowledged that military action in Iran could endanger American troops and result in the regime shooting ballistic missiles at Israel, but said “the risk associated with that is far less than the risk associated with blinking and pulling the plug and not helping the [Iranian] people as we promised. … We have to be good to our word.”

Should the mullahs’ regime fall, Graham said, it will be the result of Israel’s “determination to … go on the offensive” in response to the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas, sponsored in part by Iran, and the “bravery of the people of Iran, who said ‘we’ve had it; we want change.’” 

“I look forward to the day that Israel no longer has to fear a nuclear weapon developed by the Iranian regime,” he said.

Graham also recalled attending a demonstration against the Iranian regime in Munich over the weekend, and displayed a “Make Iran Great Again” hat, the idea for which, he said, came from diplomat Morgan Ortagus.

“The best way to make Iran great again is through the people, not the ayatollah,” Graham said.

In Gaza, Graham said that Hamas is “playing a game,” and Trump should set a time limit for disarmament. 

“I think it’s either going to take pressure from the region to get a monster to disarm, or Israel is going to have to go back in and wipe them out. The sooner we get an answer to those questions the better,” he said. 

Graham also expressed doubts that Gaza can be rebuilt “if right down the road there’s a neighborhood controlled by Hamas.”

Graham’s remarks came following meetings with Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar and former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, and he plans to visit the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia in the coming weeks.

The senator said one recurring theme in his meetings in Israel was expressions of appreciation for UAE leadership, specifically President Mohammed bin Zayed, as “a stalwart, reliable partner under difficult circumstances.” 

As for concerns about antisemitic and anti-Israel messages coming out of Saudi Arabia, Graham said that he knows Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman well, and that he “believe[s] he still has the same vision for the region as he did before Oct. 7, but Oct. 7 took its toll.”

Graham expressed support for Netanyahu’s plan to taper off U.S. military aid over the next decade, saying that “rather than writing a check, he wants to create a partnership. … I like that idea. The wars of the future are being planned here in Israel, because if you’re not one step ahead of the enemy, you suffer. … We’re looking at Israel advancing down the road of new weaponry far beyond us. It would be nice to be part of that process.”

As to Trump calling Israeli President Isaac Herzog a “disgrace” for not yet deciding whether to pardon Netanyahu of his various corruption charges, Graham said: “I’ll leave that to President Herzog.” 

American Airlines announced plans on Friday to resume direct flights to Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport starting in March, marking the first time since the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks that the carrier will fly directly to Israel.

Flights to Tel Aviv are scheduled to resume on March 28, 2026, just days ahead of the Passover holiday, when Israel typically sees an influx of tourism. Tickets will be available for purchase beginning Monday.

The announcement comes weeks after Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire in the Gaza war. American is the last of the major U.S. carriers to resume flights to Israel.

Throughout much of the war, Israeli airline El Al was the only reliable option for direct travel to and from the U.S., leading to a shortage of flights to meet travelers’ demands and soaring ticket prices. The pause sparked debate among lawmakers over whether the airlines’ decisions were influenced by internal and external political pressure.

United and Delta both briefly resumed service between Israel and the New York area for short periods in 2024 after suspending all flights on Oct. 7. Both airlines fully reinstated flights earlier this year. 

It was the day that Israelis have waited for after more than two years — or two years exactly by the Hebrew calendar. Thousands had already assembled by dawn at Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square — where some had slept overnight —  for the release of the last remaining hostages known to be alive. Shortly after 8 a.m., the first seven hostages — Omri Miran, Matan Angrest, Ziv Berman, Gali Berman, Guy Gilboa-Dalal, Alon Ohel and Eitan Mor — were released to Red Cross custody.

“Habayta,” meaning “home,” the unofficial anthem of the hostage families, played over a montage of photos of the 47 men and one woman who have spent the last 738 days in captivity — a scene that has repeated itself in the square every Saturday night for two years.

Israeli networks split coverage between the live festivities across the country, in-studio reporting and interviews with hostage families and former hostages. Former hostage Emily Damari called into Israel’s Channel 12 upon the release of her neighbors and friends, twins Zvi and Gali Berman, and said the Shehecheyanu prayer giving thanks — a prayer also recited by the thousands thronging in and around Hostages Square. The crowd erupted in joy at the sight of the two brothers being reunited. 

By just before midday, the 20 living hostages — also including Avinatan Or, Bar Kupershtein, Ariel and David Cunio, Eitan Horn, Elkana Bohbot, Evyatar David, Maksym Harkin, Matan Zangauker, Nimrod Cohen, Rom Braslavski, Segev Kalfon and Yosef-Chaim Ohana —  were on Israeli soil.

The first images of the men trickled out over the course of the morning: Miran, flanked by his wife and father, wearing a shirt with artwork by his two young daughters; the Berman twins in Maccabi Tel Aviv jerseys; Ohel, pale but smiling and standing on his own, with sunglasses to protect his damaged eyes.

In contrast to previous hostage release, as dictated by the agreement, there were no propaganda ceremonies staged by Hamas as they handed over the captive Israelis. Instead, Hamas made video calls to the hostages’ relatives, who spoke to their loved ones as they stood beside their masked and uniformed captors.

Amid the hostage releases, President Donald Trump descended from Air Force One to the tarmac at Ben Gurion Airport on Monday morning, where he was greeted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog. White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump — who spoke at Saturday night’s hostage rally in Tel Aviv. Read our coverage of their speeches at the rally here.

Signing the Knesset’s guestbook after his arrival, Trump wrote, “This is my great honor — a great and beautiful day, a new beginning.”

With the release of the last living hostages, and later today the remains of  four of the 28 deceased hostages, Israel will begin the process of releasing close to 2,000 Palestinian prisoners in accordance with the first phase of the deal. After that, attention will turn to negotiations surrounding the deal’s second phase. 

After addressing the Knesset, Trump will travel to Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, for a signing ceremony that will also include Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas. Trump’s speech was delayed due to a call with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who extended an invitation to Netanyahu to join the ceremony. Netanyahu’s office released a statement saying that the prime minister thanked Trump for the invitation, but won’t be able to participate due to the close timing with the beginning of the Simchat Torah holiday this evening.

It was a day of celebration after two years of pain, longing, fear, anxiety. It was the first time in two years that Israelis were able to wholeheartedly greet each other with ‘Chag Sameach‘  — a greeting that took on a double meaning on the eve of Simchat Torah, which begins this evening. 

But the day will take a heavier turn this afternoon when the remains of just four of the deceased hostages are expected to be returned to Israel, bringing a combination of pain and closure to their loved ones who will finally be able to give them a proper burial. Meanwhile, the 24 other hostage families — who were shocked to learn this afternoon of the low number of bodies that will be released — will be left waiting for the remains of their loved ones to be located and returned home. The Hostages Families Forum called the development a “blatant breach of the agreement by Hamas,” and called on the Israeli government and the mediators to “take immediate action to rectify this grave injustice.” 

United Airlines announced Thursday it plans to resume direct flights to Israel from Chicago O’Hare and Washington Dulles international airports for the first time since the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks. 

Flights from Chicago are set to commence Nov. 1 and will operate four times per week, and flights from Washington are scheduled to begin Nov. 2 and will operate three times per week, according to the airline. 

Currently no other airline offers direct flights to Israel from Chicago or Washington. United and Delta offer daily flights between Israel and the New York area. 

“The resumption of these flights underscores United’s longstanding commitment to Tel Aviv,” Patrick Quayle, United’s senior vice president of global network planning and alliances, said in a statement. 

United restarted its flights to Israel in February following a 16-month hiatus in operations to the Jewish state after the war between Israel and Hamas broke out in October 2023, with the exception of two brief periods in 2024. 

For more than a year, Israeli airline El Al was the only consistent option for direct travel to and from the U.S., leading to a shortage of flights to meet travelers’ demand and soaring ticket prices. The long pause led to much debate among lawmakers and high-profile figures over whether the airlines’ decisions were influenced by internal and external political pressure.

Pro-Israel groups and Canadian politicians expressed outrage on Wednesday after organizers of the Toronto International Film Festival canceled an invitation to show the documentary “The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue,” about the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks, at its upcoming festival, citing the use of Hamas footage of the attacks that had not been approved for use by the terror group. 

The documentary tells the story of retired Israeli general Noam Tibon, who raced from Tel Aviv to rescue his son and two young granddaughters trapped in a safe room in Kibbutz Nahal Oz when Hamas terrorists invaded on Oct. 7.

“The Toronto International Film Festival’s reasoning for canceling the October 7 documentary screening is completely absurd and transparently dishonest,” the American Jewish Committee said in a statement. “Pulling a movie because footage wasn’t cleared for copyright by a terror group is so ridiculous that it would almost be laughable — if it weren’t so deeply, shamelessly disturbing.”

In an open letter, Creative Community for Peace, a nonprofit that mobilizes prominent members of the entertainment community to oppose boycotts of Israel, wrote that “instead of advancing peace, TIFF has chosen to amplify hate.”

“This is a surrender to an antisemitic campaign determined to silence Jewish and Israeli voices, at a time when antisemitism in Canada is surging to historic levels. Your decision has only deepened and legitimized that hostility. You claim the cancellation was for security reasons — yet anti-Israel productions face no such barrier.” 

The CCFP letter continued, “You claim that the project couldn’t be screened because the filmmakers didn’t have the rights to footage Hamas — a Canadian designated terrorist group, broadcast to the world on October 7, 2023 when they massacred, raped, brutalized, and kidnaped thousands of innocent people from toddlers to Holocaust survivors — but that strains credibility.”

“By pulling this film, TIFF has silenced a story of extraordinary courage and survival,” Noah Shack, CEO of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, the advocacy arm of the Jewish Federations of Canada, said in a statement. “This shameful decision comes at a perilous time, as extremists are emboldened by recent plans by Canada and other nations to recognize Palestinian statehood.” 

Toronto City Councillors James Pasternak and Brad Bradford called on the TIFF to reverse its decision. 

“If TIFF does not reverse its decision, [the] Council should demand an investigation into this film banning decision,” Pasternak and Bradford said in a joint statement. “This film tells the story of a heroic rescue in the face of unimaginable violence, yet instead of defending truth and artistic freedom, TIFF appears to have yielded to political pressure and the fear of protests. Intimidation must not dictate which stories can be told. Silencing survivors and granting a listed terrorist organization any semblance of legal legitimacy is not neutrality — it is a moral failure.”

A TIFF spokesperson told Deadline that the invitation was withdrawn “because general requirements for inclusion in the festival, and conditions that were requested when the film was initially invited, were not met, including legal clearance of all footage.”

“The purpose of the requested conditions was to protect TIFF from legal implications and to allow TIFF to manage and mitigate anticipated and known risks around the screening of a film about highly sensitive subject matter, including potential threat of significant disruption.”

The 2024 TIFF festival also did not spotlight an Israeli film. Rather, it featured three anti-Israel documentaries, with four more slated for 2025. The festival is scheduled to run Sep. 4-14.

The day after Israel’s Security Cabinet voted to seize control of Gaza City, the Hostages Families Forum organized a major protest in Tel Aviv against the decision, warning it would put their loved ones’ lives in danger.

But Tzvika Mor, father of hostage Eitan Mor, has been speaking out against the Cabinet decision for a different reason — he thinks the IDF should be pushing even more aggressively to take over the rest of Gaza.

Nearly two years since his son was kidnapped while working as a security guard at the Nova festival on Oct. 7, 2023, Mor, 48, has not wavered from his position that defeating Hamas must be Israel’s top priority in the war in Gaza, above the hostages.

Mor, who lives in Kiryat Arba, a settlement abutting Hebron in the West Bank, normally works as an ADHD coach. But since the Oct. 7 attacks, he has divided his time between advocating for the country’s victory over Hamas and serving as an IDF reservist in the Paratroopers’ Brigade. In the long term Mor wishes to see the entirety of Gaza become part of Israel, telling Jewish Insider in an interview on Sunday, “It is the land of the Tribe of Judah; it is ours.”

As chairman of the Tikvah Forum, a more hawkish minority group of hostage families than the larger and better-known Hostages Families Forum, Mor and several other hostages’ relatives oppose partial deals and the release of large numbers of terrorists, arguing that only sustained military pressure will bring all of the hostages home. Mor spoke out against the Israeli Security Cabinet’s recent decision in his interview with JI.

“The question isn’t what they’re going to do, but what is the goal. If the goal is to lead Hamas to negotiate, it will fail, just like in Gideon’s Chariots, which took five months and didn’t bring back the hostages and didn’t destroy Hamas,” Mor said, referring to the IDF operation that began earlier this year. “The goal cannot be to bring [Hamas] to talks; it must be to destroy them.”

Hamas, he said, is not motivated to return the hostages, because they have the food, fuel and water that they need to survive, but if they feared for their survival, the situation would be different.

Mor compared the situation to the story in Genesis in which Abraham’s nephew Lot is kidnapped by four kings, and Abraham took an army with him to fight the kings.

Abraham “didn’t talk to them. He didn’t pay them. He fought a war until they surrendered. That is the way,” Mor said. 

Mor said fighting to pressure Hamas to return to the table reflects an order of priorities that is both wrong and ineffective.

“The war cannot be about the hostages, and I say that as the father of a hostage. How many soldiers should be killed for the hostages?” he asked. “You don’t go to war to bring back hostages. You go to war for sovereignty, for deterrence. Then, when you win, you get your captives back.” 

Prioritizing the hostages “not only harms national security, but it also hurts the hostages, because Hamas learns that they’re the most important to us and raises the price all the time. It’s indescribable stupidity,” he lamented.

Mor warned that if Israel “concedes in Gaza, Hamas will never give up all of the hostages … And what would the message be to the Arabs in Judea and Samaria” – he asked, using the biblical name for the West Bank – “that kidnapping Israelis is the best thing to do?”

In the past, Mor said, “it was clear that there was no negotiating with terrorists. We would try to save our hostages and take risks, but we could not give in to terrorism.”

Mor cited research by the Yachin Research Center, which he said showed that four times more Israelis were killed in terrorist attacks between the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993 and 2023 than in 1949-1992.

“That means that since Israel gave in to terrorism, more Israelis were murdered. It’s clear … That needs to stop,” he stated.

Asked about the concerns that other hostage families have expressed about expanded military action in Gaza putting their loved ones at risk, Mor responded with a question: “Is our war in Gaza necessary? If there weren’t hostages, would we still need to go to war?”

“The answer is yes, because [Hamas] cannot remain our neighbors after we saw what they can do, or they would do it again. They are religious people; they live for this. They don’t live for a nice house and a car and social status. Not for coffee shops and pilates. They live to kill Jews. They’re like zombies. You have to destroy them. The war would be necessary even if there were no hostages,” he said.

As such, Mor said, Israel must take the necessary steps to win the war in Gaza: “It cannot be that we will endanger 10 million Israelis because of the hostages. We need to solve that problem such that we are not harming national security.”

“We have fears, too,” he added, “but in war, some are hurt. Soldiers are injured in the war too.”

Mor and another one of his sons have been in combat units in the current war. Thirteen soldiers in Mor’s brigade have been killed.

Early in the war, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with members of the Tikvah Forum, Hebrew news coverage accused the forum members of being Likud plants or, at least, being easier for Netanyahu to talk to than the Hostages Families Forum, whose early leadership included political campaigners involved in protests seeking to bring down his government.

Mor, however, has been and continues to be critical of Netanyahu, who he said he hasn’t spoken to in six months, and of Likud ministers who he has spoken to more recently, including Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel and Agriculture Minister and former Shin Bet director Avi Dichter.

“I tell them these things, but almost all of the ministers in Likud align with the prime minister and say we have to agree to partial [hostage] deals,” Mor lamented.

Mor says that he has faced pressure for raising a different voice from the more prominent hostage relatives, and that “people defame and curse me.” In December 2023, the father of another hostage accused him on live television of giving up on his son, leading Mor to start crying. 

“The Israeli media doesn’t help. They lead the campaign” against him, he said. “But I feel that I am a messenger of the people of Israel. It is clear to me that the people of Israel want to win … They are connected to their roots, to the Land of Israel and to Judaism. They don’t want to be sold dreams and delusions that ‘it will all be OK, we can give in to terror and then deal with it later.’ We can’t deal with it. If we surrender, we will pay a higher price.” 

Mor has not seen pictures or videos of his son Eitan, 25, since Oct. 7, 2023, but he said that the most recent sign of life he received was from Israeli intelligence services in February this year. 

“We don’t know anything except that he’s alive,” Mor said.

In May, Eitan’s mother, Efrat Mor, said she learned from another hostage released in the first deal in November 2023 that Eitan is using his “incredible social skills … both for himself and for the other hostages” to lift everyone’s spirits. 

Eitan is the eldest of eight children.

“He is very strong, physically and mentally. He was very Zionist. He was a fighter and commander in the Golani Brigade” of the IDF, his father said. “He’s not soft; he doesn’t whine. He is strong; he’s a leader. We are sure that if he is with other hostages, he is helping them and strengthening them.”

When Hamas terrorists attacked the Nova rave, Eitan contacted an uncle because his parents do not use phones on Shabbat. He said that he and his friends were hiding, and sent videos of terrorists on pickup trucks. He also sent his location so that his uncle could pass it on to the IDF. The last time he was in contact with his uncle was at 10:04 a.m. His parents did not know that he was at the party, and they did not find out about the Oct. 7 attacks or that their son had been taken hostage until the evening.

Later, Nova survivors said that Eitan left his hiding place and saved their lives, which his father said “tells you the most about him.”

“He could have gone home at 6:29, but he stayed to save people,” Mor said. “He hid people and ran with them until he was kidnapped at 12:30, not by Hamas but by Gazan civilians.”

United Airlines announced on Tuesday that it will resume flights from the U.S. to Israel on July 21, which will make it the first American carrier to resume service to Tel Aviv since the outbreak of the Israel-Iran war. The airline has suspended its service to Israel multiple times since the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks on Israel. 

The lack of international airlines operating in Israel has led to a shortage of flights to meet travelers’ demand and soaring ticket prices, and caused major challenges for tourists attempting to leave Israel at the outset of the war with Iran.

“This resumption is in line with United’s longstanding commitment to serving Tel Aviv,” United said in a statement. “Throughout 2025, United has flown to Tel Aviv more than any other U.S. airline.”

Other carriers, including Delta, American and Lufthansa, have also announced that they will resume flights to Israel, beginning in late August and September. The resumption in air services follows the European Aviation Safety Agency’s (EASA) decision to withdraw flight restrictions for European airlines to Israel, Iran and several other Middle Eastern countries.

Iranian ballistic missiles struck Soroka Hospital in Beersheba in southern Israel and sites in the Tel Aviv area on Thursday morning, wounding 89, including three seriously.

A missile struck the hospital’s old surgical building, severely damaging it and causing what a Soroka spokesperson described as “extensive damage in various areas” of the hospital complex. The surgical building had been recently evacuated in light of the war, and patients and staff had been moved to areas with reinforced walls. Injuries from the strike were light, hospital representatives said.

Soroka is the largest hospital in the Negev, such that the strike left a large swath of Israel without a functioning major medical center. Other hospitals in the area, including Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon and Assuta Medical Center in Ashdod, prepared to take in patients from buildings that were damaged. Magen David Adom provided four intensive care buses, able to transport a total of 23 ICU patients and 50 lightly injured casualties.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar wrote that “The Iranian regime fired a ballistic missile at a hospital. The Iranian Regime deliberately targets civilians. The Iranian regime is committing war crimes. The Iranian regime has no red lines.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted on X that “Iran’s terrorist dictators shot missiles at Soroka Hospital in Beersheba and the civilian population in the center of the country. We will make the dictators in Tehran pay the full price.”

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement that the price would be to destabilize the Islamic Republic’s regime.

“The prime minister and I instructed the IDF to increase the force of the attacks against strategic targets in Iran and against governmental targets in Tehran to remove the threats to the State of Israel and undermine the Ayatollahs’ regime,” he stated.

Iranian news agency IRNA claimed that the target of the strike was an IDF intelligence outpost in Beersheba’s HiTech Park, which is over a mile away from the hospital. A television channel tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said that the missile was aimed at a “military hospital” in response to strikes on “civilian hospitals” in Gaza.

In the same 30-missile barrage, Iranian missiles struck a school in Holon. No children were present, because schools have been closed across Israel since Friday, but three elderly residents of adjacent buildings were wounded in serious condition, in addition to 62 others with minor to moderate injuries.

Another missile struck near the Ramat Gan Diamond Exchange, abutting Tel Aviv, causing minor injuries to 21 people and damage to 20 buildings in the neighborhood, which includes some of Israel’s tallest buildings.

Shrapnel struck Sheba Medical Center, Israel’s biggest hospital, also in Ramat Gan.

Overnight, the IDF intercepted several drones launched by Iran at Israel towards central and northern Israel. 

Jordanian authorities reported that an Iranian drone fell in a shopping center north of Amman, damaging a car and a bus station. Syrian media reported that an Iranian drone was shot down over the country.

The IDF struck an inactive nuclear reactor near Arak in Iran early Thursday after sending warnings to civilians in the area. The IDF Spokesperson’s Office said the strike included “the structure of the reactor’s core seal, which is a key component in plutonium production.”

“The strike targeted the component intended for plutonium production, in order to prevent the reactor from being restored and used for nuclear weapons development,” the IDF Spokesperson’s Office said.

The IDF also gave details of strikes on the active nuclear site in Natanz, which “contained components and specialized equipment used to advance nuclear weapons development and projects designed to accelerate the regime’s nuclear program.” 

In addition, 40 IAF fighter jets struck dozens of military targets in Tehran and other parts of the country, including factories manufacturing ballistic missile and air-defense components, as well as air-defense batteries, surface-to-surface missile storage sites, radar systems and other targets.

IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir sent a letter of encouragement to IDF soldiers and commanders on Thursday, saying that they are “writing a new chapter in history for the State of Israel and the entire Middle East.”

”Thanks to a decisive and impressive surprise opening strike, we have achieved tremendous goals: We eliminated the regime’s command echelons, delivered a deep blow to the capabilities used for the Iranian nuclear program, identified and struck missile launchers, and we are continuing and increasing the strength of our operations as necessary,” Zamir wrote.

Iranian news reported that the country’s military shot down a second Israeli Hermes Drome. The IDF confirmed that Iran downed the first UAV a day earlier.

Israel’s Home Front Command loosened restrictions on Israelis on Wednesdays, allowing people to return to workplaces with safe rooms and for up to 30 people to attend synagogue at a time. Schools and kindergartens remained closed.

A poll published by the Israel Democracy Institute found that 70% of Israelis support the campaign launched against Iran last week, while 10% support the campaign but think the timing is wrong and 13.5% oppose it. Among Israeli Jews, 82% support the strikes, whereas only 11% of Israeli Arabs do, according to the poll. Jewish Israelis across the political spectrum support the operation: 57% of those who self-identify as left-wing, 75% of centrists and 90% on the right.

Though in past polls, most Jewish Israelis did not think Israel should strike Iran without help from the U.S., this week 69% thought it was the right decision. In addition, 68% of Jewish Israelis thought that Netanyahu’s motivation behind launching the operation against Iran was security-related, while 68% of Arab Israelis thought it was political.

The poll was conducted this Sunday-Tuesday among 594 Israelis, with a 3.61% margin of error.

Last Thursday, Sam Heller went to sleep at a Tel Aviv hotel, thinking that any potential military action between Israel and Iran wouldn’t start until after his flight back to the U.S., scheduled for Saturday night. 

He was wrong.

When Home Front Command alerts woke Heller at 3 a.m. on Friday, informing the nation that Israel had launched a preemptive attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, he quickly booked the first flight out to Paris from Ben Gurion Airport.

“I went straight to the airport, and they locked the doors to Ben-Gurion, and they stopped letting people in,” Heller told Jewish Insider on Tuesday, safely back home in Cleveland. “They’re like, ‘We’re closing our airspace indefinitely. Your flight’s been canceled. All flights are canceled. You can’t get out.’”

Like some 38,000 other foreign visitors stranded in Israel after the country’s preemptive strikes on Iran prompted days of Iranian ballistic missile attacks on Israel, Heller began to try to think of creative ways to leave the country. First he called an Israeli shipping company and asked if he could travel as a stowaway on a cargo ship heading to Cyprus. They told him yes, at a cost of 87,000 Euros for 12 people. He said no.

Then Heller, who was visiting Israel as the last leg of a monthlong trip after graduating from the University of Michigan in May, called a sailing company from which he had rented a boat two years ago. They told him the only boat suitable for travel to Cyprus was out of commission. Another no. Next, a phone call to a company that offers helicopter tours of Israel, thinking helicopters might not be included in the ban on flying. Nope. 

Finally, he tracked down a company that offers private security details in the Middle East. There, he identified a circuitous route out of Israel that took him 36 hours: departing Israel through the Taba border crossing to Egypt, being driven three-and-a-half hours to Sharm el-Sheikh and taking a flight from the Sinai resort town to Istanbul. He left Israel Saturday night after Shabbat and landed in Cleveland at 11 p.m. the next day. That’s a relatively fast trip compared to others who have made it out.

In the days since the Iran-Israel war started, a cottage industry has emerged to help ferry people from Israel to other destinations around the globe. 

Israeli airspace was closed for five days and the U.S. Embassy said it was unable to assist Americans seeking to evacuate. After the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, several State Department-led charter flights brought Americans to Athens — but charter flights were not an option following Israel’s attack on Iran and the ensuing war between the two countries. A State Department spokesperson declined to comment on Tuesday.

El Al canceled all flights out of the country through at least June 23, and foreign carriers pulled out of Israel for longer. Israeli carriers El Al, Arkia and Israir announced on Tuesday that they received permission from the Israeli government to organize repatriation flights to bring back Israelis stranded abroad. The first two flights from Larnaca, Cyprus, landed at Ben Gurion Airport on Wednesday morning. 

The Israeli Tourism Ministry launched an effort on Tuesday to facilitate the departure of tourists from the country, distributing a digital registration form for departure flights from the country. 

But until those flights begin, in WhatsApp threads, Facebook groups and private messages, Americans stuck in Israel are passing along any information they can find to try to help get themselves and their loved ones home. The details are hard to verify. The costs range from expensive to astronomical. 

One graphic shared widely on WhatsApp advertises an emergency evacuation flight from Israel to New York, promising a Wednesday afternoon departure to Eilat and a bus transfer to Sharm el-Sheikh, followed by a charter flight to Milan and then a connection to JFK — “lavish meals included” and “security escorted” — for $2,200 a person. According to the travel company’s website, though, it was already sold out by the time the graphic circulated. Another message advertised a chartered flight from Aqaba, Jordan — near Eilat — to Paris, for $3,000 a person. Abraham Tours, a travel company best known for its hostels in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, advertised a cross-border transfer to Amman for $438. 

Adir Fischer is the vice president of marketing at Magnus Safety, a global search-and-rescue company based in Israel that is arranging boats to take people between Haifa and Larnaca, Cyprus. He can fit about 25 people on a tugboat for a 17-hour journey, costing between 1,000 and 2,000 Euros a person. 

“If you have three kids and a husband, it’s around 7,000 Euros a trip. Not everyone has it liquid, and it’s prepaid,” Fischer told JI on Tuesday. That’s before adding in the cost of flights from Cyprus back to the U.S. Still, he has turned away over 100 people because there isn’t enough room on the boats. 

One American woman who lives in Israel plans to depart on Wednesday on a small boat privately arranged by her husband’s company. They will be traveling with their six-month-old baby and two friends, at a cost of $15,000 for the five people. 

“Either I’m brave, crazy or an idiot. I’m not quite sure yet. But we really want to get out,” she said, requesting anonymity to speak about sensitive travel details. 

Early Sunday morning, Shira Raviv Schwartz woke up to a red alert. She was in Israel visiting her cousin, a trip she takes most summers. Soon after, her apartment building in Tel Aviv shook violently. In the morning, Schwartz saw that the next block had sustained a direct hit from an Iranian ballistic missile. She decided she needed to leave with her husband, their young adult son and her 84-year-old father-in-law. 

“I can’t take another night anxious in the safe room,” Schwartz said from Amman, where the family awaits a flight to Cairo, then another to Athens and finally a flight home to Chicago. 

Large tour groups have been luckier than individuals or families, who have to sort through the options themselves. Birthright Israel arranged for a private luxury cruise ship to bring 1,500 American young adults to Cyprus, where they boarded four planes back to the U.S. chartered by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. 

Jonathan Schanzer, who was leading a delegation hosted by his think tank, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, worked with the organization’s staff to get the group to Amman via the Allenby Bridge, the only border crossing between the West Bank and Jordan. (This is not an option for Israelis, who are not permitted to pass there.) He considered whether driving to Allenby amid the threat of incoming Iranian missiles was too dangerous but decided to risk it.

“Every security specialist warned me that the time in the war away from a shelter was the dangerous period, and I understood that,” Schanzer told JI. “But we were running out of programming for our participants and they were all sleep-deprived, as was I, from the incessant sirens every night. They didn’t sign up for this.” 

Jerusalem travel agent Mark Feldman said the key is not to tell clients what to do, but to give them options.

“Let him or her make the choice. I would never want to be responsible for somebody taking a 24-hour boat to Cyprus, throwing up the whole way, and emailing me saying it was the worst time of their life,” Feldman, the CEO of Ziontours, told JI. 

His business is at capacity simply trying to get existing clients into and out of Israel. His advice to those without a connection to a travel agent is to stick to trusted sources and avoid the “incredible amount of rumor-mongering.” Mostly, he is advising people to be patient, particularly those who do not have the appetite for a dayslong odyssey through multiple countries. 

But those who are waiting until the airspace reopens are not going to have an easy time leaving, Feldman warned. 

“Hard as it is just calming people down and relaxing them, the problem will come when the airport is open, and the thousands of people that are stuck here won’t have flights to get out,” said Feldman. If the airspace opens on June 23, the flights departing that day will be the ones that were initially scheduled for June 23 — meaning anyone with a June 23 ticket will have a confirmed seat. Everyone who has been stuck in Israel for days will be competing with each other for the empty seats.

“Many people assume, ‘Because I was bumped, I get first priority,’” said Feldman. “You don’t.”

TEL AVIV — The old Kibbutz Movement headquarters was bustling with activity this week. Like many other buildings in the center of the city that housed once-prominent organizations, this one was repurposed years ago into a high-tech office, with open-space work areas, lounges with beanbags and fancy coffee machines. And at first glance, the building looked like any other office in Tel Aviv’s tech sector – but cybersecurity firm Check Point and all of its tenants moved out weeks ago. 

Since then, all six stories of the building, as well as the basement, were repurposed as the headquarters of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, the largest and most prominent civil society organization supporting and advocating for the families of those abducted by Hamas on Oct. 7. The forum is providing free therapy and assistance to the families who need it and sending them around the world to make their relatives’ cases, filling a vacuum left by a mix of government inaction and slow action.

Yet, the politics of their public campaigns and the tactics and tone of the forum’s advocacy for the hostages’ release have pushed away a small group of hostages’ relatives, who established their own, more hawkish group and publicly criticized the forum.

A massive, impressive operation, the forum has tried to help the families in every possible way, as evidenced by the signs outside the elevators on each floor of the building. Finance, therapeutic and medical staff are on a floor that has individual offices and isn’t just open-plan. International relations and media are on another. There’s a large legal department. A graphics team puts together videos for social media, fliers and banners.

Former Labor MK Emilie Moatti was making herself coffee at the start of another day at the head of the Forum’s diplomatic team.

“October 7 was a Saturday. This forum was founded on Tuesday, and I was working for them by Thursday. [Former Deputy Attorney General] Raz Nizri was already heading the legal department – I asked who’s dealing with international affairs,” Moatti told Jewish Insider, while looking for a fresh croissant to snack on. 

Once a prominent political strategist who led, among other campaigns, Reuven Rivlin’s successful bid for the presidency, Moatti was chairwoman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Subcommittee on Foreign Policy in 2021-2022. 

She joined a team that was co-founded and led by one of the best-known political strategists in Israel, Ronen Tzur, who’s known for his no-holds-barred style, and in recent years has been a leading figure guiding protest groups against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and before that advised now-war cabinet Minister Benny Gantz. 

In a conference room with panoramic windows on one side and wallpapered with the iconic “Kidnapped by Hamas” posters on the other, Moatti described her team’s efforts.

“It took me five or 10 minutes to get started. When I was chairwoman of the subcommittee, I already had a committee of former diplomats advising me, who I would talk to about the war in Ukraine, and things like that,” she recounted. 

Then, overhearing someone on the phone outside, she interrupted herself: “Speak to him gently, he lost a son!” Moatti admonished another volunteer.

Moatti’s husband, Daniel Shek, Israel’s former ambassador to France and consul general in San Francisco who once ran for Knesset with Tzipi Livni’s party, Hatnua, helped form Moatti’s “wow” team, as she put it, of retired ambassadors, with members who include Colette Avital and J Street Israel Director Nadav Tamir.

“Our goal is to keep the hostages on the international agenda,” Moatti said. “We met representatives of every country [with an embassy or office] in Israel, except for Egypt and Turkey. We met over 200 lawmakers around the world. We met 40 heads of state – some on Zoom, like Brazilian President Lula da Silva.” 

Shek, who was also in the forum headquarters that morning, pointed out that “some people are suspicious of government officials. This is coming from civil society, representing the people, so it brings a faster reaction, even more so if there’s a personal connection,” which many of the volunteering diplomats have with foreign government officials.

Moatti said she was “amazed” to see the ex-ambassadors “call a leader and say ‘this is an emergency, help us,’ and it works.” 

Another part of Moatti’s team works on the delegations of hostages’ relatives traveling abroad. Each team is accompanied by a therapist or social worker, as well as by a media adviser.

According to Orna Dotan, a medical management professional who heads the “Hosen” or Resilience Department, named for the Hebrew term for post-traumatic psychological care: “We prepare the families before joining delegations abroad, we are present during the trips and we talk to them at the end.” 

“In all the uncertainty, we are a kind of an anchor,” Dotan said.

“Our Resilience Department was established eight weeks ago, with therapists, psychologists, social workers,” Dotan said, sitting in a lounge area where two therapists were waiting to be interviewed so they could volunteer at the forum. Outside the window was a billboard calling to bring the hostages home. “At first, we proactively made daily contact with the families to find out their emotional and mental needs. We now accompany their changing needs week after week.”

There are 92 volunteer therapists with the forum, who built trust visiting hostages’ families over the past eight weeks, as they were “flooded with anxiety from waiting so long, and exhaustion,” Dotan said.

“In all the uncertainty, we are a kind of an anchor,” she said.

Asked whether her department also supports the returned hostages, Dotan said “our focus is on the families who are waiting for their loved ones to return.”

Yet mid-interview, Dotan answered a phone call, and told JI it was from the family of a freed hostage: “They’re saying the government isn’t giving them what was promised. We’ll make sure it happens.” 

“The hostages that return are getting care, so we said we would give them a week or two and after that we will map out all of the services they’re getting from the state to see if something is missing,” she added.

The department also provides hostages’ relatives with six different types of alternative medicine, and as JI visited, a Shiatsu appointment opened up that was being offered to the forum’s employees in lieu of the relative who was supposed to get the massage.

“The volunteers who work here are also exhausted,” Dotan said. “The stories of the hostages have become part of their lives, and they also need individual and group support.”

Bar Kozlovsky, who heads the forum’s international media operation, said she has required her staff to speak to the volunteer therapists regularly, because of the “emotional roller-coaster” they have been on since Oct. 7. 

Liat Bell Sommer, a producer and editor of Israeli TV news programs, heads the forum’s media operation and said she’s seen her partner and two children “maybe for 10 hours out of the last two months.” 

There are 40 volunteers in the international media department alone, 10 of whom have taken leave from their jobs to be at the forum full-time.

“We need a vacation so badly, but we can’t leave,” Kozlovsky said.

“We work with the facts,” Bell Sommer said. “It’s important. God forbid if we were caught in a lie…The situation is so delicate, sensitive and explosive. We check everything so many times before saying it to the world.”

Bell Sommer became involved in the effort in the week of Oct. 7, through Tzur, whom she knew because of her decades of work in journalism. “I sent him a message that I want to be part of this; that I would even make coffee for the families.”

“Our main customer is the families. We want to give them a platform to relay their messages,” she said.

Asked how they deal with the conspiracy theorists and atrocity deniers, Kozlovsky said they won’t answer them directly and they will not send out videos of the hostages filmed by Hamas.

“We work with the facts,” Bell Sommer said. “It’s important. God forbid if we were caught in a lie…The situation is so delicate, sensitive and explosive. We check everything so many times before saying it to the world.”

The forum works in cooperation with the families when releasing their details, and has produced videos featuring relatives and released hostages.

“We have a strategy,” Bell Sommer said. “Nothing is spontaneous.”

Bell Sommer got up to say hello to the sister and brother-in-law of hostages Eli and Yossi Sharabi who were walking by before continuing to describe the media training the forum provides: “These families didn’t know how to give an interview before this happened. Now there are families who know very well…We make sure they’re not alone and that everyone arrives prepared” for each interview, she explained.

During the week of the hostage releases, the forum was prepared. The moment they crossed the border into Israel, photos and short bios of each hostage were sent to local and international media. Team members were posted at every hospital to help the relatives, though the forum was not granted access to the hostages in their first hours in Israel, Kozlovsky said.

“We checked if the families wanted to talk or not; sometimes they said they have an important message to relay,” she recounted.

The forum’s many workers are all volunteers, but it still needs a lot of money to run, and that is where Yossi Moatti — Emilie Moatti’s brother and an expert on preparing companies for their IPOs — comes in. Moatti is the forum’s CEO and chief fundraiser.

He started his work by finding a registered nonprofit for the forum to work under – the Merit Spread Foundation – and then began asking Jewish communities around the world, friends and acquaintances for funding.

“There are tens of thousands of people around the world volunteering, and 79 chapters abroad,” Moatti said. 

The forum also funded the biggest ad campaign emanating from Israel in history, according to Moatti, a billion-shekel effort to put the hostages on billboards around the world, in the U.S., Canada, Australia, across Europe and beyond, as well as advertising on social media, posters, stickers, presentations, demonstrations, events and more.

Other funding is “dedicated to giving the families all the aid they need, from psychological care, to iPads and iPhones, to people who don’t have money to buy food, to flights from Eilat [where some evacuees from the Negev are staying] to here to meet with us and other families, to filing lawsuits at The Hague.” 

Asked how long the volunteer-based effort can continue, Moatti said, “on the one hand, we are working for the long term, but we’re also living like tomorrow is the last day before they come back.”

Kozovsky, normally a marketing professional, said she is in it for the long haul.

“Once you do something with such a feeling of commitment and deep meaning, it’s hard to go to regular work,” she said.

Moatti said she once thought that being a teacher would be the most meaningful work she ever did, but “this is the most important thing any of us has done in our lives. Nothing will ever match it. We are privileged to be here.” 

Danny Miran, father of hostage Omri Miran, a 46-year-old father of two from Nahal Oz, visits the forum almost daily, along with a visit to “Hostages Square,” around the corner in Tel Aviv, where there are art installations and banners calling to bring them all home.

On Oct. 7 at 6:40 a.m., Miran, who lives in the Upper Galilee, saw the news that there were rockets in the south and he called his son, who told him not to worry. Then, Miran saw the news that there are terrorists in the kibbutzim, and he called Omri again. 

“He told me the whole kibbutz is full of terrorists and he doesn’t have a gun, so he is taking two knives and going into the safe room with the family,” Miran recalled. “We were writing to each other. I asked him what’s happening and he said they’re sitting quietly. At 10:40 I asked if he’s still there, and he said yes. After that, I called – no answer. I wrote that I’m worried, answer me – there was no answer. In that moment, I was sure they were all killed.”

At 6:30 p.m., Miran received a call from his daughter-in-law Lishay’s mother that she was trapped in her home in Sderot, but that the army rescued Lishay and her 6-month-old and 2-year-old daughters, and Omri had been kidnapped.

“It was the happiest moment of my life to find out that they were alive,” Miran said. 

He drove to Kramim, the kibbutz in southern Israel where Lishay and the girls were staying, and he learned that not long after he got his last message from Omri, a child named Tomer knocked on their door and said “Omri, open up or they’ll kill me.” Omri opened the door, and the terrorists took the whole family to a neighbor’s house, where they had killed the oldest daughter, who lay dead on the floor. The family sat quietly on the kitchen floor for several hours, and were allowed to feed the children. Then, in the afternoon, the terrorists told the men to come with them, or the women and children would be killed. Omri was taken to Gaza barefoot, in his underwear and a T-shirt, with his daughter screaming “Abba! Abba!” — the Hebrew word for father — after him. The terrorists told the women and children to stay in the house quietly and no one would kill them. IDF soldiers rescued them in the early evening.

Miran took part in a vigil to free the hostages on the first Saturday night after the war began, and heard about the forum. Now, he comes to its headquarters and to Hostages Square daily and takes the time to help others in his situation. He recounted visiting the divorced husband of a woman who was kidnapped along with their grandchildren; without any official recognition since he was no longer married to the hostage, no one knew about him until Miran encouraged him to come to the forum.

“The only place where anyone is working for the families is here, nowhere else,” Miran said.

Miran said he told the government’s coordinator for hostages and the missing, Gal Hirsch, “not to talk to us anymore unless they have information. To gather 600, 800 people who want to hear something and then have nothing is not helpful. Get to work.”

Sitting in a conference room with Emilie Moatti and Shek, he said they connected him with the Hungarian Embassy; while Miran’s family hails from Iraq, his deceased wife was Hungarian and Omri holds a passport from the EU state.

Last week, one of the released hostages told him that Omri is still alive.

“Now that we know that he is alive and healthy, we asked the Hungarian Foreign Minister [Péter Szijjártó] to write a letter to Hamas to demand his return. Hungary is a friend of Israel,” Miran said.

The Resilience Department provides what relatives of hostages need the most, Miran said, “someone to listen to us. They really hear us. When they can help, they do as much as they can. And when they can’t, they tell us. We don’t have that anywhere else.

“Look how many floors there are, how many people there are at work. If the government was like this, the country would look different,” Miran said. “The smiles I get here, the empathy, the love, is unmatched.” 

Shek said he admires Miran for “his courage and his way of looking at things. It’s hard for him like everyone else, but he has the ability to help others, take an interest in others, and to remember that sometimes we need to have a sense of humor. He is someone I will never forget.”

“There’s something very destabilizing about the randomness” of the hostage-taking and massacre, Moatti said. “If it were my girls in Gaza, I know Danny would be one of the first people I would meet here.” 

Miran was forceful in his criticism of the government who he said is not communicating with the hostages’ families enough. Shek, on the other hand, tried to focus on other things.

“It’s not just about criticism of the government,” he said. “The power of this place is how fast it can react; when there’s a problem you can get answers within hours. When you have institutions, you have to print out a form, start a committee – it can take two weeks.” 

This week, however, politics moved to center stage.

Much of the chatter around the offices of the forum when JI spent the day there at the beginning of the week was about the families’ push for a meeting with the war cabinet. That meeting ended up taking place on Tuesday.

Netanyahu told the families that there is no deal that Hamas would accept in exchange for all of the hostages, other than Israel guaranteeing its survival “while it promises to do what it did on Oct. 7 again and again. We won’t agree to that and you wouldn’t either.”

“The fact is that the powerful ground operation led to freeing the hostages that were returned, and the operation is the key to bringing back the rest,” he said, according to Israel Hayom.

Quotes and recordings of hostages’ relatives shouting at the cabinet members, leaked to the media: “How do you sleep at night? Do you know the mitzvah of redeeming hostages?” one father said. “Don’t turn us into bereaved parents,” a mother said.

“You said you would get all of the women and children out,” a relative of a young woman hostage said. “We were quiet, we were respectful…Where are the young women? Why aren’t they out? They’re being tortured and raped and drugged.”

“I was right-wing my whole life; don’t disappoint me,” one said.

Yet, at least some of the hostages’ relatives did not like the others’ behavior in the meeting, and a fight among them over the right way to bring back their loved ones has been brewing for weeks.

Tal Gilboa, a pro-Netanyahu activist known for appearing on the Israeli reality TV series “Big Brother,” whose nephew Guy is a hostage in Gaza, accused the families shouting at the prime minister of arriving with scripts and having been trained by the forum’s Tzur.

“They didn’t let the prime minister talk. It was totally political,” she said. “My sister and her husband are apolitical and just want Guy home…A mother stands there and says ‘I trust you,’ and she’s shouted at by the other families. It’s just unbelievable. Is one person’s pain worth more?”

When Eliyahu Libman, mayor of Kiryat Arba, near Hebron, and father of hostage Elyakim Libman, thanked the government for the work it has done, other hostages shouted him down and called him a “plant” from the government.

Zvika Mor, another Kiryat Arba resident whose son Eitan is a hostage in Gaza, has received similar treatment in hostages’ meetings. Mor believes that “the cabinet has to make cold calculations and not follow emotions,” he told Kan, Israel’s public broadcaster.

He said he felt the Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum silenced his view, so he established a platform of his own, the Tikvah Forum, whose page on X (formerly Twitter) said it “gathers families of hostages, acting to help bring about the release of every last hostage along with national responsibility and trust in the resilience of the State of Israel and the IDF.” The forum held a mass prayer rally at the Western Wall and put up billboards with photos of the hostages and the message that “the IDF is on the way to you!” and “Be strong, we are coming!”

The Tikvah Forum even spoke out against the deal in which 110 Israeli hostages were released, saying on the one hand that it proves “that the offensive pressure works and is pushing Hamas into a corner,” but that Israel must continue military pressure on Hamas so that every hostage is released.

While the Tikvah Forum’s spokesman would not provide numbers, its photos and videos seem to indicate that only a small fraction of the hostages’ families have joined Mor, perhaps because he and Libman are settlers, while less than 10% of the residents of kibbutzim near the Gaza border, from which many of the hostages hail, voted for the right. Tthat leading figures in the forum are affiliated with the Labor party, Gantz and the mass protests against Netanyahu has not gone unnoticed by the prime minister’s supporters.

Speaking on the morning after the war cabinet meeting with hostages’ families, Mor told Kan that the meeting should not have happened at all, and the people who shouted at the ministers are “in a difficult mental state” and “lost control because of their sorrow.” 

The message coming out of the forum, Mor argued, is “to free the hostages at all costs.

“Would we accept precision missiles targeting our power stations? What does at all costs mean?” he asked.

“Why are we being displayed like we’re in the zoo? How are we different from families who sent their children to war? If my son wasn’t kidnapped, he’d be fighting in the war. I would tell him to fight with all of his might for the people of Israel. I have two other sons fighting,” Mor said. “That’s how you act in a war. The individuals have to be able to sacrifice for the collective, or there will be no collective.”