Dozens line streets to welcome released hostage Avinatan Or en route home

Rossella Tercatin is The Times of Israel's archaeology and religions reporter.

People gather to welcome released Israeli hostage Avinatan Or, who was recently released from Hamas captivity in Gaza, as he returns from the hospital to his home at the West Bank settlement of Shilo, October 21, 2025. (AP/Ohad Zwigenberg)
People gather to welcome released Israeli hostage Avinatan Or, who was recently released from Hamas captivity in Gaza, as he returns from the hospital to his home at the West Bank settlement of Shilo, October 21, 2025. (AP/Ohad Zwigenberg)

Dozens of Israelis, many of them young, gather on the roads leading to the Israeli settlement of Shilo in the West Bank to welcome former hostage Avinatan Or on his way home.

Or was released last Monday from two years of Hamas captivity in Gaza, and discharged from the Rabin Medical Center (also known as Beilinson) today.

He was kidnapped from the Nova festival during Hamas’s attack on on October 7, 2023. Footage of terrorists separating Or and his girlfriend Noa Argamani, who was also taken hostage, became one of the symbols of the atrocities.

Or’s parents Ditza and Yaron live in Shilo.

Footage of Or’s return home shows dozens of people, most of them teens, waving Israeli flags and singing songs such as “Am Yisrael Chai” — “The people of Israel live” — at a junction near Shilo.

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