‘100 black days’: NY’s Central Park hosts rally in support of hostages held by Hamas

NEW YORK — Danny Elgarat last spoke with his brother, Itzik Elgarat, at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, October 7, when Itzik called him from Kibbutz Nir Oz to tell him that his hand had been shot by Hamas terrorists through his safe room door.

“I tried to guide him to stop the blood,” Elgarat, a former Ashdod police commander recounted a crowd of 2,000 in Manhattan’s Central Park on Sunday. The Manhattan event — Marching and Running for their Lives in Central Park — marked the hostages’ 100th day in captivity.

Elgarat said he then heard noises in the background and his brother shouted, “Danny, this is the end.” “I didn’t know what he was talking about,” Elgarat told the crowd, saying that all days since the phone call were “100 black days.”

“You know, for me, it’s one day,” Elgarat said. “I am not counting the days. I just want to see my brother back as soon as possible.” The crowd responded, “Amen.”

On October 7, some 3,000 Hamas terrorists invaded Israel, slaughtered over 1,200, mostly civilians, and took over 240 hostage to Gaza. It is believed that 132 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza — not all of them alive — after 105 civilians were released from Hamas captivity during a weeklong truce in late November.

The US march and run through Central Park on Sunday morning demanding that the remaining hostages be returned home was the most well-attended of the weekly Sunday events that have occurred since October 7, organizer Shany Granot Lubaton told The Times of Israel.

Speakers included Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine as well as relatives of current and released hostages.

“We are here because Hamas has perpetrated the largest mass kidnapping in modern world history,” Levine said in a speech that was half English and half American-accented Hebrew. “From the beginning, this was downplayed by the world community, and it is an outrage.

“We will not forget – we have not forgotten,” Levine said to applause and chants of “Bring Them Home Now.” “We will be here every single week, as long as it takes, demanding that none of our leaders take their eye off this goal… We are not going to let them look away from this horror.”

Yael Alexander, a yellow ribbon around her wrist, spoke about her son, Edan, who recently turned 20 in captivity as a hostage and is a dual Israel-American citizen from New Jersey.

With her hand shaking holding her phone from which she read her remarks, Alexander spoke into the silent crowd: “I’m begging to [US President Joe] Biden and the American government, please bring my son home.”

“Edan,” she said, addressing her captive son, “I’m hoping you feel the love and light we are all sending to you in this darkness.”

As the group walked and ran around the Central Park reservoir on the blustery winter morning carrying Israeli flags and posters of hostages’ faces, they were greeted by cheers, applause, nods and even runners and pedestrians who opted to join the march, chanting “Enough Is Enough: Bring Them Home.” No counterdemonstrators were present.

“I wish they’d do this every day,” marcher Joe Scholz from New York said. “I wish the rest of the American media would keep reporting on this issue, prominently, every day, especially since they’re holding American hostages in Gaza as well.”

“I’ve been here every week since October 7,” Lenna Perlman from New York said, clutching the leashes of her two dogs, Rosie and Rowdy, who were each wearing ‘Bring Them Home’ T-shirts of their own. “We may live all over, but we can only do that safely as Jews because of Israel. So I’ll do whatever I can.”

Michael Muss, carrying a mock-up of an enlarged milk carton with pictures of hostages on its sides in an allusion to American advertisements for missing children in the 1980s, pushed up his sweatshirt sleeves to show beaded bracelets with names of hostages.

“I carry Omer [Shem Tov], Tamir [Nimrodi] and Kfir and Ariel [Bibas] with me every day,” Muss said, naming hostages. “They represent, to me, all of the hostages. It’s unacceptable how the world seems to feel that Israeli, Jewish hostages are not worth anything.”

Moshe Lavi, brother-in-law of hostage Omri Miran, said he felt today was “very powerful.”

“These events allow the families to feel that there is a community behind us,” Lavi told the Times of Israel. “Despite the voices of hate, there are voices of love and support.”

Lavi recounted recently meeting with officials in Washington, DC, while Omri’s father is in The Hague at the International Court of Justice hearing, in which Israel is accused by South Africa of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip and Omri’s sister spoke at the rally in Tel Aviv.

“We are all doing whatever we can,” Lavi said with a sigh. “We are tired. But events are so that public officials – here in the US and in Israel and in the international community – who have deserted us will understand that this is a humanitarian issue that must be resolved.

“This is not a one-time thing,” organizer Granot Lubaton told the crowd. “For 13 weeks, we’ve been doing this at 11 a.m. on Sundays, and we will keep doing it at 11 a.m. on Sundays until the very last of them comes home.”