Do not pity the dead, pity the living - opinion

It has been four months since October 7th, when my life, like those of many other Israeli citizens, have completely changed. My family members, Hodaya and Tair, were declared missing from the festival in Reim, and we did everything we could to save them. Together with many good partners, we established the Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum.

We desperately wanted to bring them home. Unfortunately, we failed our mission. Six days into the event, we learned that the bodies of Hodaya and Tair, were found in the Beeri forest after being slaughtered and burned.

I lost my family, but gained a new one – the hostages families, for whom I will do everything to help bring their loved ones home.

Currently, there is a debate about the 'price' for releasing the Hostages. Unfortunately, some are already considering the families as obstacles on the way to determining Hamas's fate and are actively campaigning against them.

However, without the return of the Hostages, no Israeli citizen will ever be safe.

The costs of hostage exchange

Releasing murderers with blood on their hands undoubtedly comes at a heavy cost. Perhaps some of the released murderers were involved in the killing of my family near Beeri. This thought disturbs me, but my concern for the Hostages, who face physical, sexual, and mental abuse on a daily basis in Hamas’s tunnels in Gaza, is greater.

Releasing terrorists comes at a high cost, but abandoning the hostages in Gaza has an even higher cost – the cost of betrayal and the loss of trust. If the hostages are abandoned, there will be no resilience for the State of Israel, and we won't be able to restore our faith in our country and the values it represents.

For the families of the hostages, their loved ones are priceless. The State of Israel cannot abandon them again. The government must not miss any opportunity to bring them home. Their time is running out.

We must bring them home now.