With her son held hostage in Gaza, one mother turns to pottery to publicize his plight

Idit Ohel doesn’t like to call herself an artist. The mother of hostage Alon Ohel, 22, who was taken captive by Hamas terrorists from a field shelter near the Supernova music festival on October 7, 2023, Ohel has taught art to generations of middle schoolers in the northern region of Misgav.

In the last 14 months, she has formed dozens of mugs on her pottery wheel, each one decorated with the Hebrew letter Aleph for Alon, and a handle that forms a heart when placed next to another one of the mugs.

“It means Alon is never alone,” Ohel said during a Zoom call with The Times of Israel, mentioning the tagline the family has used for months whenever they speak about their son, the eldest of their three children. “I give them to Alon’s friends, I don’t want them to forget him.”

Ohel throws the mugs, bowls and teapots on the wheel in her home studio, often adding a small bird perched on the rim of a bowl or spout of the teapot. The feathered, flying creatures represent freedom to her — something she craves so desperately for her son.

They’re all versions of pottery pieces she’s been making for years, as did her mother, witnessed by the many teapots displayed on the shelves of Ohel’s home.

For Ohel, teapots represent the ritual of sitting down as a family to drink tea. It’s a social activity and offers time for a family to talk and be together — something that she also craves for her own family.

Ohel didn’t sit at the pottery wheel in her home studio for about a month after Alon was taken captive.

He had reached the Supernova desert rave at 5:30 a.m. on October 7, an hour before the Hamas attack began.

Alon and his friends tried to escape in their car but had to turn around as the gunmen shot from every direction. They ran to a field shelter, where Alon last texted his family at 8:08 a.m.

It was the same field shelter where Hersh Goldberg-Polin was taken hostage, along with Or Levy, Eliya Cohen and Alon.

Alon’s phone fell and was picked up by one of the survivors, who then brought it to Soroka Hospital.

Since then, “going to the wheel,” as Ohel calls it, has been a kind of meditation for her.

“It helps me cope,” she said. “I can control what’s going on and I can control something when I can’t control what’s being done to Alon and I can’t control when he’s coming home.”

One of Hamas’s videos showed Alon being dragged by his hair across the ground outside the shelter by a terrorist in plain clothes before being lifted into a white Toyota pickup truck and hit by another terrorist, as guns were pointed at him and the other three hostages.

The Ohels don’t know if Alon was kept captive with Goldberg-Polin, Levy and Cohen. Goldberg-Polin was killed with five other hostages by Hamas terrorists on August 31 in the Gaza tunnels.

In all, 251 people in southern Israel were taken hostage by the invading Hamas terrorists on October 7, while some 1,200 were brutally slaughtered, most of them civilians.

Ohel said she tries not to think about the gruesome aspects of her son’s abduction and the last 14 months.

She talks to him as she goes about her day, as she leads meditations in her hometown as she goes to protests. One of the family’s projects is the You Are Not Alone pianos, a play on Alon’s name, with 22 pianos currently placed in locations around Israel, each one with a spotlight placed above the yellow-trimmed piano.

Alon is a pianist and was meant to begin his studies this year at the Rimon School of Music.

When others play the Alon pianos, they help keep people thinking about Alon and the other hostages, said Ohel, giving something of themselves in the process.

Ohel is also working on a new fundraising project, a yellow pin for purchase that reads “You Are Not Alone,” as a symbol of doing good for others, big or small, reminding everyone what kind of people “we want to be,” said Ohel.

She is connected with some of the other hostage parents. They live near Eitan Gonen, the father of hostage Romi Gonen, and Ohel taught art to Romi’s older sister, Yarden Gonen, many years ago.

During a Zoom call with Ohel, as she showed her paintings hung on the walls of their home — many of Ohel with her husband, Ronen, or of their three kids — there was music playing in the background, someone preparing food in the kitchen, a dog barking out of sight.

Ohel is trying not to think about the current hostage negotiations with Hamas and whether they’ll be successful, or if her son will possibly be one of the hostages released in a first round.

It’s been made clear that Hamas doesn’t know the status of all the remaining 100 hostages, and the first group would presumably include the women, children, elderly, and those most in need of medical aid.

“I’m just doing what I’ve been doing for the last 446 days, which is to continue advocating, lecturing about what’s going on and about Alon,” said Ohel.

“If they come back, we have to work to make sure this never happens again,” she said. “We have to be there for them, we have to always ask and criticize what’s going on around us. We’ll have to ask the hostages what we need to change here.”

She recently spent several days feverishly throwing a bowl for an exhibit for the Kamim Foundation, headed by former Israeli president Reuven Rivlin, which was established to help and support hostages and their families in the future.

Ohel’s bowl for the exhibit includes a bird climbing its way out, much like the pit that the biblical Joseph found himself in, thrown there by his brothers.

“The bird is trying to get out,” said Ohel. “It’s going to fly but something heavy is drawing it down.”

Ohel will attend the exhibit opening in London on January 19 and will
speak about how art helps her cope.

“I hope when I’m there,” she said, “they tell me there’s a deal and that Alon is one of the hostages being brought home.”