At sit-in, hostage relatives express anguish over lack of government efforts to free loved ones

Varda Ben Baruch, grandmother of hostage Edan Alexander, and Viki Cohen, mother of hostage Nimrod Cohen, sit next to each other at Shift 101 on Tuesday afternoon, the mostly silent, white-wearing sit-in for the hostages.

Ben Baruch tells The Times of Israel about Friday, March 14, when the family read in the Hebrew media about a possible deal with Hamas to release Edan Alexander, the only remaining living American-Israeli hostage, along with the bodies of four other hostages.

“We were in shock,” says Ben Baruch. “We were only hearing from the media, we didn’t know what to do, maybe Edan was coming home.”

Ben Baruch says they heard nothing else, and on Sunday night, in the middle of the night, as she was sleeping, her body began vibrating, “I said, ‘Varda, what’s going on, Edan is coming, Edan is coming!'”

She turned on the television and heard that there were IDF strikes in Gaza and that the war had begun again.

“No one speaks to us,” she said. “Our country is not making any efforts for the hostages. Where is Phase 2? Where is Phase 2? They forgot it; Bibi forgot about it.”

Viki Cohen says she is exhausted and anguished.

“There is a prime minister who refuses to deal with the issue; there are other more important issues for him,” she says.

She and her husband, Yehuda Cohen, were supposed to meet with the defense minister today, says Cohen, but he canceled the meeting.

She speaks about the latest sign of life of Nimrod, spotted in a Hamas video released March 1, identified by his brother, Yotam, who first saw the video on the Telegram channel, and spotted Nimrod’s tattoo, an image of a crow that he got three days before October 7, 2023, when he was taken hostage.

“It’s the first time we’re seeing his body, it’s crazy, I wouldn’t have identified him by his body, but it’s a good thing he got that tattoo,” she says.

With them are Shaul Levy, grandfather of released hostage Naama Levy, and Jucha Engel, grandfather of released hostage Ofir Engel.

Levy says that Naama is okay, he describes her as a little thin and wan but has returned to her family with great joy. He says the family can’t fully rehabilitate when they know the hostages were abandoned for months and that there are still hostages in Gaza.

“This nation can’t have a resurrection until all the hostages are back,” he says, to the applause of the crowd. “Everyone talks about solidarity, but we’re not a nation without everyone back home.”

Engel, a regular feature at many rallies and protests, talks about the family’s process of obtaining Dutch citizenship for Ofir when he was still a hostage because of Jucha Engel’s mother, who was Dutch. He mentions the steady support the family received from the Dutch government throughout Ofir’s 50 days of captivity and for the other hostages, as compared to the Israeli government, which has never contacted the family to see how they are, until now.

“Now we’re trying all the time to convince the government, the decision-makers,” says Engel. “God almighty, it can’t be that after 536 days there are still 59 Israelis held captive there, it doesn’t make sense. It’s not Jewish, it’s not Israeli, it’s a great danger for the future of our society.”