From the Liveblog of
Saturday, January 13, 2024
War doc filmmaker at Tel Aviv hostage rally: I never thought nightmares I covered could happen here
Jessica Steinberg, The Times of Israel's culture and lifestyles editor, covers the Sabra scene from south to north and back to the center
War documentary filmmaker Itai Anghel speaks after midnight at the Tel Aviv rally for the hostages, sharing his experience embedded with soldiers in Gaza.
He says the soldiers’ dreams are not to destroy Hamas, but to find the hostages, to possibly hear a voice in Hebrew, to see a familiar face from the posters of the hostages and to be able to tell them, “‘We’re here, everything is okay, we’ve come to take you home,’” says Anghel.
He says that one soldier dreamed he saw hostage Noa Argamani, who he studied with at Ben Gurion University.
Anghel recalls how he walked with the soldiers in Gaza, describing their total silence as they listened for voices, for sounds from a tunnel, to perhaps let hostages know that the IDF was there.
“I’ve covered every big conflict, Congo, Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine,” says Anghel. “Each place felt like a nightmare, but when I would come home [to Israel], it was clear that the things I documented wouldn’t happen here. Then 100 days ago, in one hour in [Kibbutz] Nir Oz, every kind of terror was there,” says Anghel, who visited the kibbutz right after the October 7 terror onslaught.
“Families were burned, rapes were committed in front of children’s parents, sometimes after they were killed. The state didn’t get to them, we didn’t get to them, and the rest of our lives will be measured by that.”
“But with the hostages, we have something we can do.”
“We know that if we don’t do what we can, it will stay with us for the rest of our lives. One hundred days is too long, and it starts to feel like the time is up, so let’s do what we can,” he says.
