NEW YORK – Released hostage Karen Munder stood behind the podium on Sunday morning in front of the more than 3,000 people gathered in New York City’s Central Park to recognize the hostages who have been held for over 150 days.
“Hello my friends,” she said shakily. “My name is Karen Munder, and 156 days ago, I was kidnapped from the safe room in my parent’s house in Kibbutz Nir Oz, together with my nine-year-old son Ohad.”
Karen’s parents, Ruth and Abraham, were also kidnapped; her brother Roi was killed. Karen, 55, and her mother and son were released after 49 days in Gaza; her father remains in captivity.
The freed hostage told the crowd that she and five other women were held inside a room in a hospital with Hamas next to them. After two weeks, five children joined them, each being held somewhere alone.
“When we met them, they were in terrible physical and emotional condition,” Munder said. “Every minute there is hell.”
“I stand here today, and I want to thank every one of you for being here today – and every Sunday,” she said. “I asked you to continue to come, demanding and shouting: ‘Bring them home now!’”
Urging for action to be taken
Gilad said a government minister told him last week that his son was not a priority.
“We try to make the war cabinet” understand that “it’s our right to see and hear what’s happened. They don’t want to hear us, so we come here. We need all of you because the only power that can move something now in the Middle East is the United States to press Qatar, Egypt, and Israel to sit at the negotiation table,” he said.
Tal’s father urged Americans to go to their elected officials in Congress and plead with President Joe Biden to bring every party to the negotiating table.
New York City Council Member and chair of the Jewish caucus Erik Dinowitz said his two young children ask why the children their age who are held hostage cannot come home.
“They ask the simplest of questions and make the simplest of observations. They said there are so many of them. This one is older than Saba, this kid is my age, and this kid is a baby. And they asked why can’t they come home,” he said.
“There are complicated problems that you cannot solve with a hashtag or with a printed little slogan on a fan at a State of the Union address,” Dinowitz said. “But this is so simple even our children understand this: ‘Bring them home now!’”
New York’s Hostage and Families Forum Foundation leader Shany Granot-Lubaton, who led the rally, said there were flags of over 20 different nationalities in the crowd – representing the nationalities of all of the hostages.
A global catastrophe
“This is not an inner Israeli or Jewish crisis; this is a global catastrophe. We demand from world leaders to step up because the citizens of the world have been taken hostage,” Granot-Lubaton said.
“This is not an inner Israeli or Jewish problem – this is the world’s problem: Bring them home!”
New York City Councilwoman Lyn Schulman, the only Jewish council member representing Queens, said constituents have told her they won’t vote for her because she supported Israel.
Schulman just returned from a solidarity trip to Israel, where hostage families asked her to come back to the United States and share their stories.
“It’s horrible that the stories of the hostages are not the ones being told. And so we have to make sure that this happens,” Schulman said. “And I’m here today to bring the stories of who they are and to say, ‘bring them home now.’”