From the Liveblog of
Sunday, February 9, 2025
Pleading tearfully for his release, mother of hostage Alon Ohel says freed hostages have just told her he is held in chains at all times, has multiple untreated injuries
In a heartwrenching television interview, Idit Ohel, the mother of hostage Alon Ohel, pleads for his release “tomorrow,” saying she has just been told that he is held in chains and has multiple untreated injuries. She urges the whole nation, and the entire world, to insist upon and enable his release.
Idit tells Channel 12 that released hostages Eli Sharabi and Or Levy were held with her son for the duration of their captivity. Their return from Gaza yesterday was the first time that Ohel’s family received confirmation that he is still alive.
Alon was injured during his abduction from a bomb shelter at the Nova music festival, Idit says, sharing what she has just been told by the freed captives, and he suffered shrapnel injuries to his eye, shoulder and hand, for which he has not received treatment. As a result, she says, he cannot see properly out of the injured eye.
Idit says she now knows that her son, like Levy and Sharabi, has been “held in chains for the entire time, and received almost no food.”
“At most, they received one pita a day, for a very, very long time,” she says.
“I can’t understand it. I don’t think there’s a single mother who could handle her son being hungry, hungry for food, and held in chains for so many days,” she says, breaking down into tears. “I just got this information,” she wails.
She says that “everything you can see that Eli and Or went through, Alon is now experiencing.”
Alon, who turns 24 tomorrow, is not slated for release until the second phase of the hostage deal, for which negotiations are only expected to begin later this week.
“What is this ‘selection’,” by which Alon is not being released? she asks, her voice rising in anguish. “In the condition that he’s in… how is he not considered a humanitarian case? Why is he not here with me now, together with Eli and Or?”
“It’s incomprehensible,” Idit says. “I’ll never understand it.”
She says: “I demand, demand, from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the cabinet, now, now, they must do everything to get Alon and everyone home. The men are suffering terribly.”
She urges all the people of Israel to act on his behalf and on behalf of all of the hostages — urging all of Israel’s artists to join the struggle, and all of Israel’s pianists to play… so that he can survive.
“Who can believe that Alon, now, as we are speaking, is chained and cannot move? The world has to turn upside down. The prime minister has to do everything so that Alon returns home. This is impossible any longer… Every citizen has to go out [into the streets] tomorrow… all the energies have to be exerted.”
“I know he is strong, that he is holding on,” she says. Members of the family endured suffering in World War II — “they also lost 30 kilos” and survived to build families.
“Alon has that heritage; we know he is strong. But we need our state, and we need the world to shout, and not allow this to continue.”
“I hope that after today, after we received this sign of life and this information, and the testimonies of those who came out from there, particularly Eli and Or, I expect not only the prime minister, but everyone involved, to call me and tell me that Alon is being released tomorrow,” Idit shouts.
“Not that they’re not doing everything, but that I know it is happening — that phase two is happening. And he is meant to be in phase one, from what I see.
“And what has been done here is shameful,” she says furiously. “This ‘selection’ — that the government of the State of Israel gave this list” of those who would be freed in phase one, first, as humanitarian cases, and only later in the still unfinalized phase two.
