David Lawrence-Young: The Grimmest 100 Days in Israel’s History
I have just returned home after attending one of the many rallies that were held this morning throughout Israel. I was not a unique demonstrator. Literally, hundreds of thousands of us stopped work to demonstrate at 11 o’clock for 100 minutes in order to call on the government to bring home the 136 hostages now held captive in Gaza. Many large businesses such as Tnuva and Wizzotsky also closed down for 100 minutes as did tens if not hundreds of smaller firms and offices. Israel’s universities also joined in. Hopefully, the world also paid attention to this mass national non-political grassroots cry for help.
Every day and night on the radio and TV news we see and hear about the hostages’ suffering. Much of this information comes first-hand from the fifty or so hostages who were released at the end of November 2023. Every day they describe the dark, dank, and damp subterranean tunnels, the starvation diet, and the complete lack of life-saving drugs that were part of their daily routine. They describe the ever-constant humiliation and fear of rape and physical abuse. This fear was justified seeing how the invading Hamas/Dash terrorists had resorted to carrying out these atrocities on that terrible day, Shabbat 7 October. Most of all they described their fear of the unknown.
We do not know if the hostages hidden deep below ground today know what is happening in Israel on their behalf. The demonstrations are attended by all sectors of Israeli society: the secular and the religious, young and old, civilian and off-duty soldiers. Many of them carried the blue and white national flag while others held up posters saying ‘Bring them home NOW.’ Many more demonstrators were wearing simple black and white badges bearing the number ‘100’. There was no need to add anything else. Everyone knew what this number referred to.
What can be done now? As far as we know, Yehieh Sinwar and other top Hamas leaders have surrounded themselves with Israeli hostages who form a human shield to protect them. This means that we cannot race in and rescue them Entebbe-like as we did nearly 50 years ago. Therefore the Israeli army is caught in a terrible dilemma: how to rescue them without causing them to die in the process?
Unfortunately, it seems that we will have to depend on the complicated international negotiations involving Hamas, Egypt, Qatar, Israel, and the USA, all of whom have their own specific axes to grind. We MUST bring the hostages home now before it is too late. As we all stood there near a shopping mall in Jerusalem on this grey drizzly morning, we still had to believe, to hope against hope that our hostages would return to us very soon. As we sang our national hymn, the Hatikva, the Hope, at the end of the demonstration, the sun burst out among the clouds and we suddenly felt its warmth on our faces. Perhaps this is a sign of hope?
David Lawrence-Young,
Writer & historian,
Jerusalem
