With the celebration of Yom Kippur, the most solemn of Jewish holidays, this Saturday, October 12 was not a day like any other in Israel. In Jerusalem, it took place against the backdrop of the continued mobilization to demand the release of hostages still held in Gaza, a little over a year after the terrorist attacks of October 7.
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It’s 6:40 p.m. Jerusalem. As the shofar, a ram’s horn, sounds the end of the Yom Kippur fast, around 300 people recite prayers in front of the tent set up for the hostages in Jerusalem. “ Yom Kippur is the time when we must cleanse ourselves of our sins, says a man who is there. So we want to tell the hostages that we are sorry: sorry because we didn’t manage to bring them back. Sorry because the state didn’t do it. But Kippur is also the hopes for the year to come and ours is to see them return » , he continues.
Ayelet Az has a number written on her t-shirt: 372, the exact number of days of captivity of the hostages in Gaza since their kidnapping during the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. She is a close by Hersh Goldberg Polin killed last month in Gaza. “ Throughout this year, we came to pray for him, she explains. So it was terrible when he was murdered with the five others, but we decided we had to continue. Continue to fight and do everything for the return of the other 101 hostages », continues Ayelet Az.
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“The government has neglected them since day one”
For this other woman, this message is all the more important since, for three weeks, the Israeli incursion intoLebanon to fight the Hezbollah is carried out far from the hostages and from Gaza. “ I think the government has neglected them since day one. And it’s even easier for him to abandon them now, because he can say that all his attention is towards the north “, she declares.
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While 200 meters away is the office of the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu“ He doesn’t care » – « He doesn’t care » – launches Ifhat, another demonstrator. So to remind her of her responsibilities, she comes back there, almost every day. With the portrait of one of the hostages.