Ex-hostage Doron Steinbrecher slams resumed Gaza fighting: ‘How are you not listening to us?’

Speaking at Hostages Square in Tel Aviv, freed captive Doron Steinbrecher says she feels “anger toward those who think it’s okay to go back to fighting” in Gaza rather than cleave to the ceasefire and hostage deal with Hamas.

“Where are you? How are you not listening to us? How?” she asks.

“The feeling there, after so much time, is that you’ve been abandoned. And that’s a pain that is impossible to put into words,” she says.

Until her release in January as part of the deal with Hamas, Steinbrecher used to dream about coming to Hostages Square, she says.

“We knew there was a square, we knew there was a place where people came every Saturday,” she says. “That that was a group of people who knew there are hostages and who didn’t carry on with life as usual.

“It gives you power, a lot of power,” she says. “It even makes you forget for a few moments the fear that you’ll be forgotten.”

Steinbrecher says that at the end of the first truce-hostage deal in November 2023, she had been told she would be released the next day.

“I didn’t sleep the entire night from the excitement that I’m coming home,” she says. “Unfortunately, the morning began with sounds of bombing, and with them, the realization that I’m not going home.”

“I come here,” she says, “because it’s the right thing because the public needs to understand it’s the only thing that matters, that it can’t get out of the headlines… and because I promised myself to always ask what needs to be done.”

“I have fears and pains, but they’re not what’s important,” Steinbrecher continues. “We, the returned hostages, can’t begin rehabilitating until everyone is here. But the country can’t either.”