As more bodies of hostages from October 7 return from Gaza, the funerals have become a symbol of Israel’s deepening national trauma. The farewell to the Bibas boys, the youngest hostages who were brutally murdered by terrorists’ bare hands, marked a turning point: a moment of catharsis that has forced Israelis to confront Hamas’ brutality, shattered the country’s faith in its leadership, and intensified the moral reckoning over what must be done to bring the remaining hostages home.
As the hostages’ bodies return in coffins, families still waiting for their loved ones face the unbearable reality that their relatives may never return alive.
We must bring all the hostages back home—the living and the deceased.
“We must bring all the hostages back home—the living and the deceased,” Orly Chen, the aunt of Itay Chen, a soldier kidnapped while fighting to save Israeli civilians from Hamas terrorists, told The Media Line.
“Our hearts are broken. Shiri Bibas and her two children were alive—they could have been saved. Instead, they were brutally murdered by terrorists,” she said. “How did we get to a point where Yarden, a hostage released just two weeks ago, now has to bury his wife and children after 507 days? We are on a roller coaster that is tearing us to pieces day by day.”
For Chen and many other families, the agony of waiting is as unbearable as the loss itself. “Each day that goes by is a step away from bringing them back,” she said. “It is highly important to return the deceased and honor them with a proper burial. This will enable the families to start to rehabilitate themselves. You can’t start rehabilitation if you don’t have closure.”
Yet, closure remains elusive as the enemy continues to hold hostages under grim conditions, and negotiations to secure their return remain uncertain.
For Rabbi Dr. David Harbater, an expert in Jewish education, what Israel is experiencing isn’t just regular grief. This is “the culmination of 16 months of grief. Nothing in Israel has been remotely normal over the past 16 months.” During this time, “many people hoped, at least in the back of their minds, that we could gain some comfort from this extended period of grief by seeing these children and their mother return. When they came back the way they did, it was like the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
There was rage towards the perpetrators and towards the government and military for failing to prevent this travesty. For most people, there was still hope, however faint, that this would have a different ending. Instead, it was like the last drop of hope being extinguished.
“There was rage towards the perpetrators and towards the government and military for failing to prevent this travesty,” Harbater said. “For most people, there was still hope, however faint, that this would have a different ending. Instead, it was like the last drop of hope being extinguished.”
Rabbi Yosef Ote, the community rabbi of the Orthodox Hazvi Yisrael Synagogue in Jerusalem, told The Media Line: “On a personal level, everyone is still grieving the loss of precious Jewish lives. Families have been shattered, and children have been orphaned. This pain will never fully go away. And yet, we are living in a time of tremendous miracles. The government and all of us must acknowledge that there is a supernatural hand, God, guiding our incredible army, our tzaddikim [“righteous”] soldiers. There is a plan, even if we cannot yet comprehend it.”
However, the emotional toll of this prolonged crisis has left Israelis questioning the government’s commitment to its citizens. The Media Line spoke to Meir Azari, the senior rabbi of Beit Daniel, the largest Reform congregation in Israel, who believes that trust in the government has been permanently fractured.
The bond between Israelis and the state—the covenant that says, ‘If you are captured, we will do everything to bring you home’—has been broken. The majority of Israelis feel betrayed. Even with the heavy price we are paying, we still believe the hostages and their families should have been the first priority.
“The bond between Israelis and the state—the covenant that says, ‘If you are captured, we will do everything to bring you home’—has been broken. The majority of Israelis feel betrayed. Even with the heavy price we are paying, we still believe the hostages and their families should have been the first priority,” he said.
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The Bibas family, he added, represented this broken promise. “We were ready to pay the price—we always knew we had to make sacrifices to live here. But we believed our government would honor its obligations to us,” Azari said. “That covenant has been shattered.”
But frustration is growing across political lines. “No matter if you are left or right, you ask yourself: How did we fail again?” Azari said. “Why didn’t we push for an agreement earlier? Why did we allow people we saw kidnapped alive to return in coffins?”
For Professor Gil Troy, author of the book “To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream” and historian at McGill University, the broken covenant doesn’t apply to the relationship between Israelis and their state but rather to the current government and, more broadly, to those allies that Israel thought it could count on.
Since October 7, the Israeli government failed that day. The IDF failed that day. But Zionism was vindicated. Zionism never promised us a rose garden. Zionism gave us the methodology to fight back.
“Since October 7, the Israeli government failed that day. The IDF failed that day. But Zionism was vindicated. Zionism never promised us a rose garden. Zionism gave us the methodology to fight back,” Troy said.
However, the fact that Netanyahu hasn’t visited the kibbutzim or used this moment to heal “leaves the feeling of a broken covenant,” he added. “But, again, the covenant is with the government, not with the people of Israel or the IDF, which has moved heaven and earth to bring the hostages home.”
Troy also pointed out that there is also a “broken covenant with the world. Even Antony Blinken, in his final New York Times interview, asked, ‘Where was the world?’ With more pressure from world leaders on Qatar, Hamas, or Turkey, this might have played out differently.”
In a recent announcement by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) National Public Diplomacy Directorate, a campaign featuring 1,000 billboards in major cities worldwide was launched that focused on Hamas’s murder of the Bibas family with their approval. This campaign emphasizes the October 7 massacre and highlights “the inconceivable brutality of Hamas and the other terrorist organizations in Gaza.” The billboards display the faces and details of the innocent Bibas family, murdered in Hamas captivity, alongside the words “Stand against pure evil.”
As these challenges mount, in Israel, a sense of moral clarity is leading to a stronger sense of legitimacy in the country’s need to act. However, Harbater, believes that Israel’s grief is shifting towards a reckoning. “There’s rage. There’s a boiling point. And once we get our hostages back, I think we will see a national reckoning unfold.”
While he avoids prescribing military or political solutions, Harbater draws a powerful comparison to Judaism’s command to eliminate Amalek—a biblical enemy defined by its cruelty. “Experiencing absolute evil firsthand changes you. Hamas, like Amalek, must be wiped off the face of the earth,” he said. “This is not a moral problem—it is clarity.”
We, as Jews, are the children and grandchildren of survivors. Our obligation is not only to remember the suffering but to build a future that is better, and sometimes you need to wipe the darkness before you can have the light.
Still, Harbater acknowledges that “rage alone does not heal a nation. We, as Jews, are the children and grandchildren of survivors. Our obligation is not only to remember the suffering but to build a future that is better, and sometimes you need to wipe the darkness before you can have the light.”
Before October 7, some Israelis believed that even Hamas could be reasoned with, that Gaza could be rebuilt, and that peace was still an option. “That illusion is gone,” Azari said. “We discovered that was a lie. Hamas took our goodwill and used it to plan a massacre.”
According to Troy, the general sense that most civilian Palestinians would have done something to improve the hostages’ situation has been proven wrong. “I’m very careful not to generalize about Palestinians. But I do think we have to be very clear in calling out the many, many Palestinians who celebrated it and collaborated. Every one of the hostages reports that there was nowhere to run. The hostages report that so-called ‘regular’ and ‘innocent’ civilians were collaborating in this horrific kidnapping and abuse of human beings.”
Similarly, Rabbi Ari Kahn, a senior lecturer in Jewish Studies and Director of the Overseas Student Program at Bar-Ilan University, sees this as a defining moment for Israeli society. “We are engaged in negotiations with ruthless terrorists who have no respect for human life,” he said. “The religious imperative is clear: to have compassion, to cry with those in mourning, and to imagine ourselves in someone else’s shoes.”
For Kahn, the crisis is a test of moral resilience—one that challenges Israelis to hold onto their humanity even in the face of unimaginable cruelty. Yet, even as he calls for compassion, he acknowledges the stark reality: “We don’t know how many are still alive, and that clock ticking is terrifying.”
According to Troy, despite the current national heartbreak, historically, the events of October 7 and the subsequent hostage crisis will have less emotional significance in Israelis’ collective memory. “The most important thing in the long term will be the extent to which people feel that we have won conclusively. The tremendous progress made in crushing Hamas, in degrading Hezbollah, in watching Syria collapse, and in weakening Iran—these will be far more determinative than anything else,” Troy argued.
Still, he continued, “the ups and downs, the roller coaster ride that Hamas has basically imposed on us, through their manipulation and their really cruel distortion of any sense of humanity, has been very problematic and very heartbreaking.”
But for now, the heartbreak extends beyond Israel. Consul General Laviv Link-Raviv, an Israeli diplomat, recently addressed a deeply empathetic audience of Israel’s friends at an Israel Breakfast held during the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) convention. The NRB is the largest nonpartisan international association of Christian communicators. Link-Raviv spoke of burying the Bibas babies after their horrific murder by “monsters.”
“Ten thousand people attended the funeral,” she told a room filled with more than 500 people.
David Parsons, vice president and senior spokesman for the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem (ICEJ), spoke with Ilan Issacson, head of security for the Eshkol Region, about his experiences on October 7 while trying to secure the communities along the Gaza Strip. Closing with a request for a moment of silence in memory of the Bibas family and all the remaining hostages still held captive by Hamas, the room was filled with respect for the dead.
For now, Orly Chen and many other hostage family members live with grief as part of life since October 7.
My family doesn’t have closure yet. Itay, my nephew, is still a hostage. He was abducted and taken hostage while saving Israeli citizens from the Hamas attack.We received a notification that he may not return alive, but with no acknowledgment of his physical status. Maybe it’s a mistake? We can’t leave the situation as is. We can’t continue with our lives until Itay is here with us. We are concerned and worried—how and when will Itay be released? Is it a privilege to ask for a grave to cry on? Is it a privilege to sit Shiva [seven days of mourning] and say Kaddish [a prayer recited by mourners]?
“My family doesn’t have closure yet. Itay, my nephew, is still a hostage. He was abducted and taken hostage while saving Israeli citizens from the Hamas attack,” she said. “We received a notification that he may not return alive, but with no acknowledgment of his physical status. Maybe it’s a mistake? We can’t leave the situation as is. We can’t continue with our lives until Itay is here with us. We are concerned and worried—how and when will Itay be released? Is it a privilege to ask for a grave to cry on? Is it a privilege to sit Shiva [seven days of mourning] and say Kaddish [a prayer recited by mourners]?”
In the face of existential challenges that threaten to diminish the Jewish soul, many people ask, “What can we do?”
Ote believes Jews “must learn to appreciate the beauty in all streams of Judaism. Though we may differ in lifestyle, beliefs, politics, and religious perspectives, and these differences truly matter, making coexistence challenging at times, it is essential to focus on the positive. We must cherish one another and internalize the truth that we are one family. Maybe a dysfunctional one at times, but a family nonetheless, one that must not only coexist but genuinely care for one another.”