It was a day of joy and tears across Israel. Families, loved ones and friends watched as Hamas released the last living hostages held captive for over two years in the Gaza Strip.
It was a day of joy and tears across Israel.
Families, loved ones and friends watched as Hamas released the last living hostages held captive for over two years in the Gaza Strip.
On day 738 since Alon Ohel was taken hostage, family and friends of the young music lover jumped to their feet, cheered, blew into shofars — traditional horns that announce glad tidings — and hugged each other when they saw his picture on a livestream among the seven hostages Hamas first released to the Red Cross on Monday morning.
“This is the best morning in my life. I just want to hug him,” Ohel’s cousin, Noam Rozen, 24, said before choking up.
With other members of his family, and dozens of supporters cheering, Rozen took down one of the hostage posters that had long been hanging by the village’s entrance and replaced it with a banner saying in Hebrew: “Welcome back home — the heart returned to beating and now we can breathe.”The wait on a Galilee hilltop village
Hundreds had been packing the small community center of the hilltop village of Lavon in the Galilee since before dawn for one of the most important days of their lives — when the last 20 living hostages were scheduled to be released, first to the Red Cross and then to the Israeli military, as part of a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war.
“I told God many months ago, ‘If Alon is coming home, I bring shofar and I say thank you for this’,” said Yaniv Shema Zion, who’s known Ohel since he was a toddler.
