Relatives of captives mark year of uncertainty, loss at Hostages Square

Thousands of people are gathered at Hostages Square in Tel Aviv to hear relatives of those who remain captive a year later recount their stories for a memorial event as the one year anniversary of the October 7 onslaught approaches.

Hagit Chen, whose son Itay was killed and whose body remains captive, recalls speaking to him exactly a year earlier while he was serving as a soldier near the Gaza border and hearing that he sounded unwell.

“I thought maybe he was hungry so I asked if I could order him a pizza to Nahal Oz,” she tells the silent crowd. “He wasn’t hungry, but said he would be happy if I ordered him food tomorrow. The next day, we woke up, turned on the TV and saw that war had started.”

Chen was killed on October 7, and his body dragged into Gaza, though he was listed as captive until March, when the army determined he had been killed.

“We’ve been in this for a year and we still don’t have a place to mourn,” she says.

Ziv Abud, whose boyfriend Eliya Cohen remains captive, and Noam Peri, daughter of slain captive Chaim Peri, also speak at the event.

Peri recalls that the night before her father was kidnapped, the family gathered together to hear him tell of his experiences in the Yom Kippur War, exactly 50 years earlier, for the first time.

“That night was sad, but it was an emotion-filled night that we were all together,” she says. “We listened to him and that’s how we left him at the end of the night, with hugs, a kiss and much love.”