Danielle Aloni: ‘Everything can be pushed back on the agenda – but not the hostages’

“Nothing is more important than bringing back the hostages. We can deal with everything later, except for the hostages,” released hostage Danielle Aloni said last week.

Aloni spoke with the Magazine after participating in a photo shoot highlighting how the Israel-Hamas war has impacted how we dress in Israel. For her, the photo shoot was all about keeping the hostages at the forefront of everyone’s mind.

Some people who don’t understand the necessity of a hostage deal or think that there is time to spare when it comes to bringing the hostages home feel this way because “they don’t understand anything  [about what it is like being in captivity],” said Aloni.

She emphasized that time is running out for many of the hostages still held by Hamas. “I saw with my own eyes people who were in captivity with me, and they were very much alive, and now they are not alive. We don’t know why they are not alive.”

Aloni described her captivity by Hamas terrorists as being “without air, without sun, with terrorists hanging around all the time, without liberty, without freedom, with hardly any food,” she said, adding that there were weeks in which she did not shower.

Because she was taken captive with her young daughter Emilia, Aloni couldn’t think about herself or take care of herself while in captivity.

Selfless behavior

“My focus was not on myself; I neglected anything to do with myself – how I looked, whether I was eating or not, showering or not, whether I smelled bad. It didn’t matter. There is no me, there is a girl,” she said.

“There is a very little girl whose whole world collapsed in a day. She saw and experienced such terrible things. And I am the only person, her only family there. I am her whole world.”

Aloni emphasized the importance of not normalizing the situation in which hostages are still held. Asked how Israelis can do this, she highlighted a few ways.

“We make noise, we leave it in our consciousness all the time. We become ambassadors for this county,” she said.

She stressed the importance of being ambassadors for Israel, saying that global organizations have failed Israelis.

“We saw how UNICEF said nothing: UNICEF! Children were taken captive by terrorists and UNICEF said nothing,” she offered as one example.

We also must be unified as a society, said Aloni, pointing out that on a practical level, this means showing more compassion for one another and supporting each other.

We need to have “less anger on the road, less judging people for their political opinions,” she said, adding that Israelis should “judge people for their good qualities.”

Loving your neighbor is important, she said. “If we keep that mitzvah, I think the world will be a much better place.”

Aloni again stressed the necessity of bringing the hostages home – now. There is “nothing at all more important than the hostages. Everything else can be pushed back on the agenda, but not them.”