Their smiling faces look down from the sides of skyscrapers, walls between Tel Aviv’s restaurants and bars and a giant video screen at a shopping mall entrance.
More than 240 hostages were snatched at gunpoint on 7 October from their homes or workplaces next to the Gaza Strip, from military bases and a big outdoor dance party.
They included some 30 children, the youngest just nine months old. But since Hamas gunmen spirited them away to Gaza, the fates of most remain unknown.
For Israelis reeling from last month’s bloody massacres, it is an ongoing trauma.
“This is the last photo we have of my aunt. She was taken on a motorcycle by two terrorists,” says Eyal Nouri, showing me a picture of Amina Moshe, 72, being driven away from Nir Oz, a kibbutz where she lived for 50 years.
“No children, no babies, no older women are meant to be part of any conflict. It’s something against humanity to kidnap children.”
Although this is the biggest, over the years, Israel has endured many hostage crises.
During the 1980s, the country showed it was ready to pay high prices for its citizens in prisoner swaps with Palestinian and Lebanese armed groups. Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, who later founded Hamas, was freed in one exchange.
Source: bbc.com
