On the second Holocaust Remembrance Day post-October 7, 2023, I was struck by how much has changed since last year, but also how much has not.
Edan Alexander, the last living American hostage, was recently freed. A huge development in the fight to bring the hostages home.
All the female hostages (the living ones at least) are now free, but there are still 58 hostages in Hamas captivity. The war in Gaza stopped, but it was recently restarted.
Both terror groups’ military capabilities have seemingly been significantly diminished, and the United States elected a president who said he stands unapologetically with the Jewish state’s right to defend itself. And yet, there are still 58 hostages in Gaza.
The world moves forward as 58 hostages remain in Gaza
Let me repeat that. There have been two Holocaust Remembrance Days since October 7. The United States has a new president. The war in Gaza stopped and started again, and a completely new war began. Katy Perry went to space. The [Kansas City] Chiefs went to the Superbowl twice. Millions of babies were born. But there are still 58 bodies that were ripped alive from their homes in 2023 and still have not been returned. Some of those bodies no longer breathe. Some of them are still physically alive but have suffered so much torture and emotional anguish that the vitality of their minds and spirits is concerning.
Last summer, one of my close friends, whom I had known since middle school, passed away. When it happened, and the lives of my friends and I came to a screeching halt, I was aghast that the rest of the world did not shut down as we did. My friend was here one day and then not. He simply did not physically exist anymore. We were crippled by our inability to grasp that reality.
I wanted to chastise and berate people on social media posting about their vacations or laughing in a coffee shop. A person I loved was gone, and everyone needed to drop everything until we brought him back.
Of course, I knew this was illogical. My friend was dead and buried. There was nothing to be done for him. But I often reflect on that feeling when I think of the hostage families. Their family members are gone, in a sense. They are kidnapped and being abused by genocidal terrorists. Some are still alive and will not return home alive. But the world has largely moved on.
After his release on May 12, Edan Alexander shared that while in Hamas captivity, he was starved, kept chained in a cage, and violently tortured. We know this is happening to other hostages, even as I write this, and it will continue to happen until all of the hostages are released.
I have heard some of my Jewish friends express that “it is [insert date], but it is still October 7.” And it will be until all the hostages are home, and maybe for a long time after that.
The difference between my frustration and theirs is that their family members are either still alive or deceased, but barbarians are holding their bodies captive. The difference is that there is something to be done to save them, but the non-Jewish world has all but forgotten them or chosen not to care.
If it were my family member, I would be screaming – literally.
The hostage families are screaming. Recently, they gathered at the Gaza border with microphones to scream and cry. And the anguish and desperation in their sometimes shaking but always strong voices broke my heart.They were screaming on one side of the border, perhaps in tandem with their loved ones who were screaming on the other side from the terror tunnels of Gaza.
As a child, thinking about the Holocaust, I used to wonder how it continued for so long. How did the entire world not shut down completely until the camps were liberated and the burning and gassing, and execution of Jewish men, women, and children ceased?
I used to wonder how anyone during that time got anything done or went about their daily lives knowing what was happening at that very moment in Europe.
But here we are. The largest single-day massacre of Jewish people since the Shoah occurred in 2023, and every day since, there have been Jewish people being tortured in captivity. And the world just moves on.
But we must not move on. We have to keep raising awareness and fighting for the 58 hostages still held in Gaza. Like the families at the Gaza border we must keep screaming until their loved ones are home.
The writer is member-engagement manager for the Network of Enlightened Women, an organization for culturally conservative women at American universities, and an alumna of Passages, a Christian organization dedicated to taking Christian students to Israel and mobilizing young people to support the Jewish state on campuses and in communities across the US, and to stand up against antisemitism.