Hostages Forum to shut offices; volunteers and funds made available to last 3 families

Saturday night’s mass rally for captives in Gaza held at Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square could be one of the last, with the Hostages and Missing Families Forum  saying it will be greatly narrowing its activities now that there are only three families left to support.

The three hostages still in Gaza are slain captives Dror Or, Master Sgt. Ran Gvili and Sudthisak Rinthalak. It will be up to their families to decide whether to continue to hold the weekly rallies.

“The official struggle is over,” said Lior Chorev, who heads strategy for the ad hoc organization established in the days after the October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist onslaught to support families. “There’s a hostage deal, and the US and Israel stand behind it.”

The organization came together quickly in the days following the attack and became a massive nonprofit run by the families as well as by professional management. It effectively became the official voice for most, though not all, of the families of the 251 people taken hostage on October 7 as they lobbied for their return.

Chorev said the forum will offer its remaining financial resources to the families of the three hostages remaining in Gaza, who will decide for themselves how to spend the funds. He noted that most of the current work regarding the three hostages involves IDF intelligence to locate the bodies, rather than the diplomacy and communication efforts the Forum has led.

A couple of dozen Forum staffers will remain on call on a volunteer basis to support the families in any way they can.

The Forum began organizing rallies in the weeks after the Hamas attack as hostages’ families called to the government to bring home their loved ones, from a stage situated on the plaza in front of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, which has been renamed Hostages Square.

Around the same time, the Hostages Forum set up its headquarters in an office building in the same neighborhood, between Kaplan Street, the Defense Ministry compound and Hostages Square. The offices were lent to the Forum by tech company Checkpoint.

“They created this loving embrace for us,” said Shira Gvili, whose brother Ran is one of the three remaining slain hostages whose bodies are held in Gaza.

Gvili told Channel 12 on Friday that her family understands why the Forum is narrowing its activities.

“You can’t have an entire building for three families,” said Gvili. “The struggle is more intimate now.”

Since the ceasefire was reached last month, the 20 remaining living hostages have been released, and 25 of the 28 deceased hostages have been returned for burial.

Hamas returned the dead hostages slowly, claiming it was having difficulties locating the bodies. Israel largely rejected this claim, saying Hamas was playing for time, but officials acknowledged that terrorists may not know the location of a small number of bodies. Now, with only three still missing, all understand that their return could be a lengthier affair.

Chorev noted that the ceasefire and return of the final 20 living hostages on October 13 brought about a significant decrease in donations to the Hostages Forum. Almost all of the donors, both organizations and private individuals, are moving on to their next projects, he said.

“We have to adapt our activities to the fact that there is a deal, and a process that isn’t up to us,” he said. “There are three hostages left, and it’s unclear how much time it will take to bring them home.”

As a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization, the Forum was entirely funded by donations that came to a total of $35 to $40 million over the last two years, said Chorev, without any funding from the government.

The Forum fundraised to send hostages’ families on foreign delegations, for housing and financial support for families who stopped working to lobby for their loved ones, and to pay the professional staff.

It also provided a variety of services for the hostages’ families and volunteers, including mental health support, holistic treatments, and three meals a day, donated by a roster of tech companies and various Israeli communities.

Elad Or, the brother of Dror Or — who was murdered in Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7 and whose body was taken hostage — has been told by the IDF that recovering his brother’s body in Gaza will require complex digging and maneuvering.

Still, the decision to close the Forum in its current form is seen by some as a turnaround from one of the organization’s famous slogans, “Until the last hostage.”

Chorev argued that the forum isn’t reneging on that promise, but rather adapting itself to the realities of the current situation.

He said the organization wants to continue to offer tools to the remaining three families to continue their struggle for however long it takes to bring home the bodies of their loved ones.

He noted that the remaining Forum staffers are in constant contact with the Or and Gvili families, and are in touch with Sudthisak Rinthalak’s family through the Thai Embassy.

The families can decide if they want to keep holding the Saturday night rallies, said Chorev, citing a cost of around NIS 200,000 ($61,000) each week. The expenses include the costs of erecting a stage with video and sound systems.

“It doesn’t seem right to continue the rallies because it doesn’t serve them,” said Chorev. “We recommended that we stop holding them at the end of the month, but they’ll decide for themselves.”

The two Israeli families, the Ors and Gvilis, are working on several activities together in the diplomatic sphere, and may do some things separately, said Chorev.

“There are differences between the families, but they’ll have to decide for themselves,” he said.

Elad Or, the brother of Dror Or, has made it clear that he doesn’t support a return to war in Gaza, but rather the fulfillment of the ceasefire.

“Some members of the government call for a return to the war and all the hairs on my body stand up when I hear that,” Or told the Times of Israel several weeks ago.

Talik Gvili, the mother of Ran Gvili, belongs to both the Hostages Forum and the smaller, more hawkish Tivkah Forum for hostages’ families, which supported military pressure on Hamas rather than a ceasefire.

The Tikvah Forum put out a statement saying it will continue its work until the last hostage is brought home and Hamas is defeated through decisive action.

“The forum will use all means at its disposal and, together with the families of those who have returned, will continue to raise and amplify the voices of the families,” stated the organization.

Chorev noted that the Forum has gone through several rounds of staffing and organizational changes over the last two years, throughout the three rounds of ceasefires and releases of hostages.

“We always adapt ourselves to the task at hand, to how many hostages are in the hands of Hamas and how much income we have,” he said. “As time passed, the income decreased.”

A new group, Organization 255, was recently founded with the support of several foundations and Jewish and Israeli nonprofits, named for the 255 hostages that were held in Gaza at the start of the war (251 taken on October 7, 2023, and four others who had been held there for years before).

It is negotiating to receive government support, and will fill the gaps created by the Forum’s closure, providing a home for the families of hostages, with a support structure complementing state services, and long-term accompaniment for family members.