Four freed hostages pen letter to PM asking him to bring captive fathers home to their children

Four recently released hostages have penned a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in which they appeal for the government to “bring fathers back to their children.”

In the letter, Or Levy, Sagui Dekel-Chen, Ofer Calderon, and Tal Shoham explain that “we were not the only ones who went through hardships and upheavals during this period. Our families and children suffered [and are still suffering] from ongoing trauma, and at the time, endless uncertainty and longing.”

“The harm to them in our absence was significant,” the four say, adding that their children now require “long-term rehabilitation and constant support” to heal from what they endured.

They note that for some families — including Shoham’s — the trauma is compounded by the fact that their children were also taken hostage and were released during the November 2023 truce, while their fathers were left behind. Others, they say, witnessed the “horrific events” of the October 7, 2023 attacks and are now “forced to endure further harm in the form of the delay in returning their hostage fathers to Israel.”

“The State of Israel has a duty to put the welfare of children and the welfare of families first, and to do everything in its power so that the hostage fathers, some of whom are dead…are returned as soon as possible,” continues the letter.

They say that the children of the hostages deserve an absolute answer “about the basic question: ‘Where is dad?'”

“This is the least that can be done for us,” they write. “This is the essence of solidarity, of concern for others, and of thinking about the next generation.”