From the Liveblog of
Sunday, April 27, 2025
Father of slain hostage Almog Sarusi asks Israeli nation to end their divisions
Jessica Steinberg, The Times of Israel's culture and lifestyles editor, covers the Sabra scene from south to north and back to the center
Yigal Sarusi, the father of slain hostage Almog Sarusi, says the disaster that happened to them, beginning on October 7, 2023, has been his family’s second Holocaust.
Speaking at an event in Jerusalem for the “beautiful six” murdered hostages, who were killed in Gaza in August 2024 and their bodies recovered days later, Sarusi says that the families of those murdered by Hamas experience the loss day after day, while Israel as a nation has returned to being divided.
Sarusi says that his son was the kind of kid that got along with everyone else, and in his name, he asks the nation of Israel to return and connect to one another.
Almog’s surviving two siblings, along with the father of hostage Matan Angrest, a soldier still held in captivity, together recite the prayer for the soldiers and a prayer for the injured.
Angrest recites the prayer for the return of the hostages.
Talia Dancyg, a young musician whose grandfather, Alex Dancyg, a Holocaust educator who was taken from Kibbutz Nir Oz and killed in captivity, sings an Arik Einstein song about finding solace under one’s wings, the words by national poet Hayim Nachman Bialik, followed by Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Waters,” joined by the crowd.
“It’s very emotional what’s happening here,” says Dancyg, looking out at the gathering of hundreds. “If only they could hear us.”
The Times of Israel Community.