Arthur, families and a documentary – L’Express

Since Tuesday evening, November 21, everything is ready. Each of these offices will take turns welcoming a family. Out of sight, accompanied by a psychotherapist, they will learn here whether their loved one – child, brother, sister or mother – is or is not one of the released hostages. The organizer is her: Emilie Moatti, 43 years old, the mistress of the “hostage house”. She can no longer sit still, she talks while walking, answers the phone, comes back, leaves. She no longer remembers when her last full night was, she smiles, black dress and pearl necklace, undone bun, graceful and determined. In this building, in the center of Tel Aviv, near the headquarters of the military command, she has been caring for hostage families since October 8, the day after the Hamas assault. A member of the Labor Party, she was a member of the Knesset from 2021 to 2022 and her husband, diplomat Daniel Shek, Israeli ambassador to Paris from 2006 to 2010.

Politics, diplomacy, discreet relationships and effective contacts, she knows how to do, it’s her job. At his side, since the evening before last, the American Mickey Bergman, a close friend of Obama, an expert in hostage release, who was in charge when North Korea captured the student Otto Warmbier, who died in 2017. “He helps us, he prepares us for the return, he explains to us how to support the families of those who will return and those who will still have to wait. We experience infinite pain at every moment.” She wants to tell everything, these last hours where every minute is torture, and also the solidarity, the friendship, the tears and the hugs, and then the history of this building, hive of anguish and hopes, haven of comfort and operational center of a global awareness campaign – a building where it is a question at the same time of surrounding, reassuring, consoling, and stirring up, alarming, maintaining tension at the place ‘a government obsessed with total war.

Here, therefore, a few steps from the headquarters of the military command, in the very center of Tel Aviv, was the headquarters of her party, the Labor Party, “the leftists”, she explains. At this point in the video conversation, Arthur, the famous television producer and host, corrects her. “In France, we would rather say socialist, and there are not many of them anymore,” he smiles. The French star helps the team of volunteers. Money, contacts, he struggles, that’s all he does anymore, he speaks English all day, he doesn’t sleep much anymore either. He has come four times in recent weeks. He would like us not to talk too much about him. Since he joined them, he has lived under police protection, surrounded by “six bodyguards”, he says.

Emilie Moatti and Arthur met in France, where she lived with her husband, an ambassador. When she wanted the families of the eight Franco-Israeli hostages to be received in Paris, she called him. Since then, they have spoken every day. Arthur is angry that the French are so little concerned about these families who all have French passports. “Why did we have to wait forty-two days to see their faces on the front page of a daily newspaper? They wouldn’t really be French because they are Jewish? What is this lack of empathy? Not a tribute to the 44 French people killed by Hamas? Nothing, not a word.” He says that it drives him crazy, that Carlos Ghosn was suddenly French when the Japanese put him in prison, that Ingrid Betancourt was French when she was detained by the Farc in Colombia, and he continues the long list of binationals that the Republic is concerned about. And not them? Not the family of Eliya Toledano, not the family of Sahar, Erez and Ofer Kalderon, not that of Mia Shem, of Orión Hernández Radoux, not that of Ohad and Eitan Yahalomi?

The former MP, too, does not understand why France is so timid and silent – ​​”At home, we don’t hear many Jewish stars speaking; in other countries, they mobilize.” She takes up the story of life in the hostages’ house. These last hours are unlike any other, both the first to instill hope and the worst. She twists her hands, breathes, smiles again. Who will come back? Who won’t come back? In which state ? “The released hostages will be taken directly to five hospitals, and only a very restricted circle of relatives will be able to go to their bedside.” Among these children, some will learn that they are orphans, that their parents were killed by Hamas. Behind his back, their photos, 238 in total. She knows every face, every first name, every last name, every story, she says it’s strange but she dreams of them. “So we can dream of someone we don’t know.” Last night, it was Romi’s turn to come and walk in his dreams. She caresses her photo on the wall. She laughs as she imagines the day when these hostages will come here to visit them. “It will be strange for them, we here know them so well, we will hug them, we will call them by their first name and they don’t know who we are.”

This four-story building was his party headquarters. But their electoral results having been so bad, with revenues falling, the political party had to resign itself to selling it. The day after the Hamas attack, the former MP gathered lawyer friends, a few former MPs like her, first in her living room, then, on October 10, the new owner of the building called them. He lends it to them. Indefinite duration, no rent. Four floors. Emilie Moatti and her companions organized everything there. A medical floor: 30 doctors, 10 pediatricians and 30 psychotherapists, psychoanalysts and psychiatrists. Another, with living rooms, offices, children’s rooms, sofas, beds, toys. Yet another, devoted to diplomatic, administrative and political tasks, is where she installed her computer in the middle of a huge table. On the ground floor, the canteen can produce 200 meals. It is not used often. All restaurants in Tel Aviv bring food, offer drinks. Solidarity weaves a network. The airline EL AL offers free plane tickets every time a delegation leaves for a foreign capital – “We call them in the morning, we need 10 tickets to Geneva or New York, and it works.”

The families of the hostages, for the most part, no longer have housing, they lived in the ravaged kibbutz, they sleep in neighboring hotels, rooms offered by hoteliers or by supporters who, from all over the world, call to help, give lodgings. ‘money. While in the Knesset, she chaired the Foreign Affairs Committee. She quickly gathered around forty former ambassadors, they are there, around her, activating their networks, organizing trips to Geneva, Madrid, Paris, New York, 34 countries visited in six weeks. Colette Avital, “the French equivalent of Simone Veil”, 83 years old, former ambassador and activist known for her feminist commitments, comes almost every day to help. “We all left our lives and our egos.”

From Paris, Arthur watches over social networks, he knows that the facts are already suspected, questioned, suspected. He organizes the response, documents it in three parts. A documentary about the Tribe of Nova festival – 260 people murdered, 2000 injured – director Dana Stern is filming it and the film should be completed in eight weeks. With an Israeli production team, it also follows life in this house, a camera accompanies the families in their movements, their tears, their words, their conversations, their daily life in tatters, suspended. Every day, from morning to evening, they allow themselves to be recorded. “I want to document the memory for tomorrow, to fix it forever in our history.” Arthur would like this film, “when everything is finished”, to be broadcast throughout the world. He is also preparing a documentary in virtual reality, “with a headset on our eyes, we will be able to move around the kibbutz of Be’eri, walk through the bloodied houses, walk the streets, a voice-over will tell what happened there -down”.

Producer Dikla Barkai, known for her Netflix series The Shtizels, is in charge of this project. “May the indescribable massacre never be forgotten, and it drives me crazy that it has to be justified,” he concludes. This weekend, he hopes. “The hostages we are waiting for will be the first fifty, we will stay until the last,” he adds. Emilie Moatti approves. Until the last one. They know it will last for months.