From the Liveblog of
Monday, February 17, 2025
Oct. 7 survivors from Be’eri mark 500th day at ravaged kibbutz, urge return of living and dead hostages
Jessica Steinberg, The Times of Israel's culture and lifestyles editor, covers the Sabra scene from south to north and back to the center
At Kibbutz Be’eri, survivors gather at the site of the devastated community to mark 500 days since the October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack with a rally calling for the return of the 73 remaining captives held in Gaza.
One of the speakers is Nira Sharabi, whose husband Yossi Sharabi was killed in captivity in Gaza and whose brother-in-law Eli Sharabi was recently released from captivity and found out that his wife and two daughters were killed in their Be’eri home that day.
Sharabi says that after all the living hostages are returned, they will have to turn to the next impossibly difficult task of bringing back the bodies of all those killed and taken to Gaza — or who have died in captivity — and burying them in Israel. Hamas is believed to be holding the bodies of at least 36 people.
“Our beloved Yossi, until he’s be buried here, we’re can’t say our farewell to him and can’t continue forward,” she says.
Other Be’eri residents speak, including former hostage Raya Rotem, who says she knows what it’s like to be a hostage in Gaza, even though she was “only” there for 54 days.
“What happens to a person who is kept there for 500 days? If there hadn’t been additional releases in the previous [November 2023] deal, I wouldn’t have left the house where I was kept and where I separated from Itay Svirsky, who was supposed to mark his 40th birthday,” says Rotem, referring to a hostage who was later killed in captivity.
