600 Days

On Wednesday, May 28 – 600 days since the events of October 7 – the Technion suspended activities and held a solidarity rally for the 58 hostages who remain in Hamas captivity, and their families. The rally, attended by Technion management, families of hostages, and hundreds of students and administrative and academic staff members, was hosted by Meital Barron, head of the Welfare Department in the Division of Human Resources, who said: “600 days have passed since that deadly and horrific Saturday, after which we will never be the same again. We never stop thinking about the precious lives lost and about the 58 hostages who still have not been returned from Gaza. Six hundred days. More than a year and a half. Time in which children have grown up, families have fallen apart from the pain, and hope has stretched to breaking point. Fifty-eight captives are still there – living and dead.”

Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan said: “251 men and women, elderly, children, and infants were kidnapped on October 7. Some were murdered in captivity, a small number were rescued by security forces, and some were released in exchange for the high price of thousands of terrorists with blood on their hands. But 58 of them have still not returned. Every Israeli, soldier or civilian, has always known that if they were taken captive, the State of Israel would do everything in its power to bring them home. That has always been a cornerstone of the Israeli ethos – a sense of mutual responsibility that bound us together. For the sake of camaraderie and mutual responsibility, we risked our lives, went to battle, and buried our friends. That same spirit lives in the soldiers and security forces who risk their lives every day to rescue hostages from Hamas tunnels.

What happened to that mutual responsibility that connected us one to another, in whose name we made sacrifices and endured wars and loss? What happened to human compassion? How can hearts be hardened toward the families of the hostages, suffering for 600 days and losing their sanity from worry? How can they be mocked, humiliated, and cursed with death upon their loved ones? In what soil did such indifference to suffering take root, and what have we done to ourselves as a society?”

The Technion president called on the Israeli government to take action and return all hostages home: “I call from here, on behalf of all of us, for the Israeli government to do everything – everything, and with full intent – to free all the hostages now, while there is still a chance to save their lives. In the hell they are in, the hostages have no time, and their lives hang by a thread. The families suffering in this hell have no time, and neither does Israeli society. Now is the time for a courageous decision, for the beginning of healing. This will mark the start of our true war of rebirth.”

Yuval Bar-On, a student at the Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine and partner of Shir Siegel, daughter of hostage Keith Siegel, shared: “‘Something’s happening in the Gaza Envelope, check on Aviva and Keith’ – that was what my mother said when she called on the morning of October 7 and woke Shir and me in our apartment in Bat Galim. 484 days of an ongoing nightmare, which, thank God, ended well for us four months ago. But the ending is still far from over and far from good, as today we mark a day we had so hoped would never come. Fifty-eight of our brothers and sisters are today marking 600 days in Hamas captivity.”

Ora Gazit, daughter-in-law of Aryeh Zalmanovich z”l, who was kidnapped from Nir Oz to Gaza and murdered there at the age of 85, thanked the large crowd for attending and said: “Aryeh chose life – that is his legacy and our duty. Against all odds, he survived 40 days and nights until his body could no longer bear the suffering – he was murdered in captivity, and his body is still being held in Gaza. Aryeh grew up in Haifa as an only child and in 1957 moved south with friends to establish Kibbutz Nir Oz. He was kidnapped alive and murdered in Hamas captivity. Fifty-eight people, living and dead, are waiting in Gaza for us to rescue them. This is a wound we cannot heal if we do not bring them all home now.”

Meital Barron and Itai Israel, chairman of the Technion Student Association, read aloud the names of the 58 hostages still in Hamas captivity. The rally concluded with a joint prayer for the return of the hostages and the singing of the Israeli national anthem, Hatikvah.