Released hostages’ families use crowdfunding to fill gaps in state rehab grants
Opposition MK: It’s ‘shameful’ that former captives have to ask public to supplement compensation; PMO: State provides broad package for them in order to prevent need for donations
Several recently released hostages and their families have reached out to the public to donate funds to supplement the state-funded stipends and grants that each abductee returned from Gaza receives to cover their rehabilitation.
Both the Channel 12 network and the Ynet news site reported on Sunday that the families of multiple hostages who have been freed during the ongoing Israel-Hamas hostage release-ceasefire deal opened online crowdfunding campaigns to help pay for rehabilitation and other expenses during their loved ones’ recoveries.
The reports detailed the state allowances that each released hostage and their family receives, as well as the gaps in state funding that the families were seeking to fill with their public fundraising efforts.
According to Channel 12, the Hostages, Missing Persons and Returnees Directorate of the Prime Minister’s Office provides each freed hostage with a prepaid debit card loaded with NIS 10,000 ($2,800), as well as an “organizational grant” of NIS 50,000 ($14,000).
Additionally, each hostage receives one year of full medical disability compensation to the level of their pre-war salary.
The state also provides housing grants of over NIS 250,000 ($70,000) for the purchase of a first apartment, with additional loans available up to nearly NIS 600,000 ($170,000). Returned hostages from Gaza border communities are entitled to additional housing assistance.
The hostages will be given additional assistance for mental health therapy up to NIS 6,000 ($1,700) per year, and the National Insurance Institute will fully finance medical treatments not included in the hostages’ regular insurance packages for three years.
They are also entitled to benefits for purchasing a vehicle, discounts on property taxes and electricity bills, and vocational rehabilitation, including some funding for university studies.
The hostages’ families are additionally entitled to NIS 4,500 ($1,250) for domestic help and NIS 2,000 ($550) for travel for each of the first three months after their release from captivity.
According to Ynet, the families of Arbel Yehoud, Eli Sharabi and Ohad Ben Ami, who were each returned to Israel in recent weeks after almost 500 days in captivity in Gaza, have all opened campaigns on online crowdfunding sites since their return.
For Sharabi, whose wife and daughter were murdered during Hamas’s brutal October 7, 2023 attack and massacres which killed some 1,200 people and sparked the war in Gaza, his family set up a fundraising page with the goal of raising NIS 1 million ($280,000).
Sharabi and his brother, Yossi, were among 251 people kidnapped to Gaza by Hamas and other terror groups on October 7, 2023. His home in Kibbutz Be’eri was destroyed during the attack.
His brother died in Hamas captivity, likely as the result of an IDF strike.
In just 24 hours, the campaign raised over NIS 2.4 million ($675,000).
“Eli is coming back to life – and we are here to build him a new future,” the funding campaign reads, adding that Sharabi “returned to a reality that is impossible to imagine.”
“We can’t change the past, but we can give Eli a fresh start: Physical and emotional recovery, a meaningful life, real support – it’s in our hands,” the crowdfunding campaign adds.
“This is a project that was born right now,” Sharon Adan, Sharabi’s close friend who initiated the fundraising drive, told Channel 12.
“We realized that it was unclear what Eli’s needs would be in the future, both medically and in terms of acclimatization,” he added, explaining that they needed to secure his financial future and prevent him from facing financial hardship.
The families of Yehoud and Ben Ami have raised close to NIS 600,000 ($170,000) and NIS 760,000 ($215,000), respectively.
In response to the reports of crowdfunding for returned hostages, Democrats MK Naama Lazimi announced her intention to initiate a Knesset debate on the issue, arguing that the responsibility for providing funds to the freed hostages and their families should fall entirely on the state.
“It is shameful that they are forced to raise funds in their situation,” Lazimi told Channel 12. “The state must show generosity and recognize its obligation to pay for full rehabilitation.”
The freed hostages and their families “need a tailored response that is many times more extensive than what the state is currently providing,” she added.
MK Yitzhak Kroizer of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, who led some Knesset efforts regarding state compensation for hostages and their families, told Channel 12 that he was in contact with the families of some hostages about a potential expansion of the compensation package.
Kroizer’s office stated that he is “constantly working to expand assistance to the families of the hostages according to their needs,” including pushing for “new legislative amendments” if necessary.
Responding to Channel 12’s report on the compensation packages, the PMO’s Hostage Directory said, “The State of Israel provides a broad envelope for the rehabilitation of returnees, in order to prevent a situation in which families will be required to finance the rehabilitation process through donations.”
Seventy of the 251 hostages abducted on October 7, 2023, remain captive in Gaza. Nineteen Israeli hostages have been freed so far under the ceasefire deal that went into effect last month: four female civilians, five female IDF soldiers and 10 male civilians. In addition, five Thai hostages were released outside the framework of the deal with Israel.
Another 14 Israeli hostages are slated to be released in the initial stage of the ongoing truce deal with Hamas, of whom the terror group has said eight are dead.
The terror group freed 105 civilians during the weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that.
Eight hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 40 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military, as they tried to escape their captors
Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the body of an IDF soldier who was killed in 2014. The body of another IDF soldier, also killed in 2014, was recovered from Gaza in January.
