What it’s like to fight for your (captive) family - with Maya Roman
There has been growing tension within Israeli society over where to prioritize a hostage deal – at what cost (in terms of how many and which Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons should be part of the deal and the length of any temporary ceasefire).
At the same time, the sense of urgency behind Israel's hostage cause in capitals around the world is…drifting. Not disappearing, but drifting. A turning point seemed to be when the UN Security Council passed a resolution – 14-0 (made possible by a US decision not to veto) – that, for the first time, did not call for a ceasefire that was conditioned on the return of the hostages.
It’s a sense we get from families of hostages, who are in regular contact with media, NGOs and governments around the world.
It’s against that backdrop, that we sat down in person with Maya Roman, who was in New York and Washington, DC.
Maya Roman is an Israeli journalist from Tel Aviv. Two of Maya’s cousins – Yarden Roman-Gat and Carmel Gat were visiting Carmel’s mother, Kinneret, in Kibbutz Beeri on October 7th for the Simchat Torah holiday. Carmel and Yarden were taken hostage, Kineret was murdered.
Yarden was released as part of the hostage deal last November. Carmel is still being held.
Since 10/07, Maya has not stopped organizing or advocating for the release of her family. When we hear of the hostage families movement, Maya is the kind of person who has been in the middle of it. In our conversation, Maya talks about what they have learned from Yarden since her return from captivity, and where the hostage movement may go from here, at this crucial and very raw phase.
"Bring Carmel Back" on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bringcarmelback?igsh=MTBkaGlsd3JtbXI4eQ==
Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
MR: I have no way of knowing what would have happened if there wasn't a Gilad Shalit deal, would there have been a different kind of Yahya Sinwar? Like, we don't know. We're never going to know. What we need to ask ourselves is, is it worth it? Is the price worth it? And to me, the answer has to be yes. Because as you said, what differentiates my country from Hamas, among other things, is our commitment to human life. These are Jewish values. These are Israeli values. And that makes me still proud to be an Israeli, even in times where I disagree with my government vehemently. And I think that if Hamas takes that away from us, then to me, they've won. This is the one thing that I feel is in the core of who we are as Israelis.
DS: It's 10:00 PM in New York City on Thursday, April 11th. It's 5:00 AM in Israel, on Friday, April 12th, as Israelis are getting ready to start their day. According to public reports, Hamas has indicated through intermediaries that fewer than 70 of the remaining 133 hostages are still alive. Hamas has also apparently indicated that, of those 70, there are fewer than 40 hostages alive in the quote unquote “humanitarian” category, meaning there are fewer than 40 women, children, elderly, or those in need of medical attention. The rest of the hostages fall into a different category, that for captured soldiers and adult men. Also, soon after the withdrawal of most of the IDF ground forces from Gaza last week, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said, and I quote here, “We have the utmost obligation to bring our captives back home, and that Israel has reached an opportune moment, but that it will require difficult decisions.” There has been growing tension, in recent weeks within Israeli society, over where to prioritize a hostage deal, at what cost, in terms of how many and which Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons should be part of the deal and what the length of any temporary ceasefire should be in the context of a deal. All these questions, of course, have implications for the current war and a potential future war. Hence, the tensions. Like for many of you, the hostages are always on my mind, especially as we just crossed the six month anniversary of when all the hostages were taken across a small patch of land from southern Israel into Gaza. In the weeks following October 7th, I honestly never imagined we'd still be talking about the ongoing plight half a year later. I just assumed that most or all of the hostages would be home by now, but here we are. Even more alarming, or depressing, is that the sense of urgency around the hostage cause in capitals around the world is drifting, not disappearing, but drifting. A turning point seemed to be when the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution, 14-0, made possible by a U.S. decision not to veto the resolution, and that resolution, for the first time, did not call for a ceasefire to be conditioned on the return of the hostages. So the U.S. decided not to veto a resolution that officially delinked the plight of the hostages from the pursuit of a ceasefire. This concern about drift is one I also heard from families of hostages that I know, people for whom drift is simply not an option. These are people who are in regular contact with the media, and the NGOs, and governments around the world, and are concerned, deeply concerned, about the sense of drift as well. It's against that backdrop that I sat down in person with Maya Roman, who was in New York and Washington DC in the past few days. Maya is an Israeli journalist from Tel Aviv. On October 7th, Maya's cousin, Yarden Roman-Gat, was visiting her husband’s parents in Kibbutz Be’eri along with other family members. Yarden, and her sister-in-law Carmel, were taken hostage. Yarden’s mother in law, Carmel’s mother, Kinneret, was murdered. Since October 7th, Maya has not stopped organizing or advocating for the release of her family. When we hear of the hostage family's movement, Maya is the kind of person who has been in the middle of it. In our conversation here, Maya talks about what she has learned from Yarden since her return from captivity, what we can learn about the current state of the hostages, and where the hostage movement may go from here, at this crucial and very raw phase. Maya Roman, on what it's like to fight for your captive family. This is Call Me Back.
And I'm grateful to be here together with Maya Roman, who's here from Tel Aviv, here in New York City, to mark the six month anniversary of October 7th. Maya will be participating in the march in Washington to memorialize, to honor the six month anniversary. Maya has a very direct, through multiple family members, connection to October 7th. So, Maya, thank you.
MR: Thank you.
DS: Let's start with October 7th. And I've heard the story. We know people in common. You know my sister, Wendy. So I'm familiar with the story. But our listeners may not be. Can you just explain what happened to your family on October 7th?
MR: Yeah. On October 7th, you know, I was in, um, Giv’atayim, it's actually a suburb of Tel Aviv. I was at my parents house. And I woke up to the missile alarms, like everyone in Israel. I work in independent journalism, so very quickly I started getting messages that something is wrong. I was not concerned for my cousin Yarden initially, because Yarden was living in Kibbutz Be'eri with her husband Alon and her three year old daughter Gefen for the past four years. But the month before, in September, they decided to leave the kibbutz, actually. Yarden felt that she couldn't be the kind of mother that she wanted to be with the constant missile alarms and the anxiety they caused her. So they decided to leave the kibbutz.
DS: Which is, being in southern Israel, this is a common thing. That the sirens go off, and when they go off, because of the proximity in the south to Gaza, you only have 12, 15 seconds to get to the Mamad, to get to what otherwise known as a bomb shelter. And that's pretty traumatic for children, this constant race to the bomb shelter or the safe room.
MR: She felt like it was really affecting, not just her daughter, but really her ability to be like a calm presence in her daughter's life. Uh, so she wasn't so much concerned about the safety, but really just the constant anxiety of the alarms. And so they decided to leave the kibbutz and they were actually, they went with my family, with her brothers to, um, a family trip in South Africa, and they all came back on the 6th of October, but unbeknownst to me, they decided to go and visit Alon's parents who still lived in the kibbutz. Uh, as you said, Be’eri is one of the kibbutzim that are closest to the border. And so, on the morning of the 7th, you know, when we realized she was there, uh, Yarden is a very quiet, private person. So she doesn't like it when the entire family bombards her on WhatsApp, because we're Israelis, so we talk on WhatsApp. And so her brother Gili was in charge of getting updates every 30 minutes and passing them along to the rest of the family. And around 10:30, she stopped responding to his text messages. So for the 7th, we were all not really present. You know, I was scrolling social media and everyone was going insane. We had no idea what was happening. You know, it's weird to think about, but we started hoping for things that are just so ridiculous to hope for. Like we hoped, okay, maybe terrorists entered the home, but they're keeping them in the home. Then we hope that, okay, they're probably keeping them in the dining hall of the kibbutz to negotiate with, and then you find yourself hoping that she was taken hostage, because it's better than her being dead, and then hoping that she was taken by Hamas, because it's better than horror, being taken by some splinter group or whatever.
DS: Or Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
MR: Yeah. And it's just ridiculous when -
DS: It's human nature, though, you start negotiating with yourself.
MR: Yeah. And your hopes keep deteriorating. But on the morning of the 8th, we got a call from Alon, telling us what happened, her husband. And he told us that at around 10:30, about four terrorists entered their home, entered his parents home. His parents were just in the kitchen, getting some food back to the shelter. And so his mother saw them first and signaled to his father to go hide. Uh, his father was able to hide in the bathroom, though they saw him and they shot at him through the bathroom door, but they miraculously missed him. And for some weird reason, they didn't kick down the bathroom door. So there's no logic to it because he keeps telling us, like, if they would have just kicked down the door, they, you know, it was a flimsy door -
DS: So they just moved on.
MR: They just moved on. And so he was able, from the bathroom window, to see like for a small, to see basically his entire family being taken away. First his wife, Kinneret, Alon's mother, who we later learned was executed not far from their home. We learned it through a video that we saw on social media. That's how her sons learned that she was dead.
DS: And they just shot her?
MR: They just shot her, yeah. We just saw her kind of in a pool of blood down the street from their home. Again, we have no idea. People sometimes ask me like, why did they shoot her and took the other hostage people? I really have no, no idea. Then they took Yarden's sister in law, Alon's sister, Carmel. And lastly, they took Alon and Yarden and their daughter, Gefen.
DS: So go over all the names again, just so we know.
MR: Kinneret is Alon's mother, is Yarden's mother in law. She was murdered. Carmel is Yarden's sister in law, is Alon's sister. She's still held hostage. Yeah. She's 39. And Yarden, my cousin, 36, was taken with her husband, Alon, and their now four year old, but at the time, three and a half year old daughter, Gefen. So Alon, Yarden and Gefen were placed in a car driven towards the Gaza border. They were in the car with four terrorists and a driver. Right before the border, like 500 meters from the border, the terrorists saw a tank. And so they decided to get out of the car and figure out what was happening. And at this point, the car slowed down and the terrorists were outside, and Yarden and Alon decided to make a run for it. They jumped out both sides of the car. Yarden was holding Gefen, and they started running. They saw an abandoned military post and they thought maybe they'll find some help there. But when they reached it, they realized it was abandoned. And at this point, Yarden made a decision that she says was very easy, but sounds impossible. And she gave Gefen over to Alon. So he could run faster and she stayed behind.
DS: And at this point. Do they have any recollection of what they were telling Gefen was happening or was?
MR: So this was all very fast. Like I went back with Alon to the point where they were running out of the car and it was really like a matter of seconds. Like they ran, they got to the post, the post was abandoned. They ran a little bit more. Yarden gave Gefen over to Alon. So at this point they didn't tell her that much, but they did tell her on the car ride. Like, these are bad people, uh, we have to be quiet. And Alon, when he ran with Gefen, basically hid with her in a ditch for eight hours until it was dark. And during this time, he constantly told her, we have to be quiet. So the bad people don't find us. She was amazing. I just think of it, a three and a half year old for eight hours placed in a ditch with her father on top of her, you know, covering himself with leaves and dirt, hearing trucks looking for them. And she was totally quiet. Later, she would tell us that, like, the one thing she told him was, oh, it's too bad we forgot to bring water on the trip. She was amazing.
DS: And Yarden, she had said, you'll be able to move more quickly than I will?
MR: Yeah. You know, Yarden, just now that she's back, thank God, says, “you know, I am not a runner. I was already out of air. I certainly can't run with, like, 12 kilos of my daughter.” Alon runs, like, it's one of his pastimes. So it was very obvious to her that like the best thing for Gefen is that Alon try and get her out of there. At this point, they were also being shot at by the terrorists who noticed them and started running after them, which is also why Yarden would explain later that she figured the worst thing in this situation is to be injured. And so she just fell to the ground and pretended to be dead so that the bullets don't hit her. And yeah, as I said, Alon and Gefen ran. They hid for eight hours. When it got dark, Alon started to make his way back to the kibbutz.
DS: On foot.
MR: On foot, barefoot, because they were in their pajamas and barefoot. Be’eri was still under fire, like the kibbutz wasn't liberated for three or four days. But thankfully, he was able to find the IDF troops outside the kibbutz and call us and tell us that he's okay and Gefen is okay. But he doesn't know what happened to Yarden.
DS: Three or four days of fighting at Kibbutz Be'eri. So where did he go after those eight hours?
MR: So he started to make his way back to the Kibbutz, and he realized that like, he shouldn't go into the Kibbutz. I don't know what made him understand, like there are still terrorists in the Kibbutz, but so he went around and then outside the Kibbutz, the IDF forces were like, waiting to go in so he could get to them and then get to safety. Like they drove them to us and give a time. You know, at this point, the second he called us, Gili, Yarden’s other brother, was waiting to maybe go to his military reserve up north and just changed course and went down south to basically beg the troops to go look for her because we had no idea if she was, maybe she's injured. Maybe she's dead. Maybe she was kidnapped again. Like we didn't know what had happened. And we figured in all the chaos that was going on, no one's going to look for one woman. So Gili went down there again and again to basically ask these troops to risk their lives and come with him, under fire. And they met terrorists several times. And these soldiers protected Gili to go look for Yarden. And the last place she was seen was a few hundred meters from the border. So this was very, very dangerous. And only after four days could they really sweep the area completely. And they concluded that she was kidnapped again. And at this point on the 8th of October already, you know, Yarden’s father called me up, called up a bunch of other family friends and family members and told me, listen, there's a situation and we need all hands on deck. And we don't know what this is going to require, but we need media capabilities. We need to think internationally. We need to get ready for whatever's going to come. And that's what we were doing. Very early on, it was clear to us that the way we can benefit and bring forth the release of the hostages is to focus on Germany initially, because we're also German citizens.
DS: And you're German citizens, how?
MR: We're German citizens because our grandparents came from the Holocaust. And so there's a law in Germany that, uh, descendants of Holocaust survivors are also recognized as German citizens. And so Yarden is a German citizen and I'm a German citizen. And really, like several days after October 7th, we had already met with the German foreign minister and eventually the German Kanzler. And uh, a week after the 7th, we had already arranged a delegation of families with German citizenship to go to Berlin, and met with the German president, did a very big rally outside the Brandenburg Gate and worked very, very hard on media in Germany because we, you know, we had to become kind of experts of international diplomacy all of a sudden. And one of the things that the advisors we met with explained to us was how crucial Qatar and Egypt were going to be. And this was on the 8th. I had no idea Qatar was relevant to what was going on in Israel at the time. And so they advised us to focus on Germany and the U.S. because these are countries that can affect what Qatar and Egypt were going to do in the future. So we've been focused on that. After 54 days, we got Yarden back, during the first humanitarian deal. It really was probably the best moment of all of our lives, which is very strange that like the best moment of your life comes out of such a strange time.
DS: I remember Wendy telling me at the time, because she was in touch with you, that it was understood during that November exchange that a lot of women and children would be released, and you thought perhaps Yarden could be included in that, but you guys weren't sure. No one ever told you she's in this, she's going to be in this round.
MR: Oh, definitely not. We thought very early on that the way to get the most people out was going to be with incremental deals. And we knew that the initial deal was going to focus on children and mothers held with their children.
DS: And why do you think the best shot at getting the most people out was with incremental deals?
MR: That's just the information we were getting. It seemed to us that trying for an all out deal of getting all the hostages back and getting all of their prisoners out just seemed too ambitious. And all of the intelligence people we talked to, all of the people involved in the army we talked to were like, no, that's not going to happen. And it seemed to us that military action wasn't going to get people out as far as we could see.
DS: Meaning operations like rescue operations.
MR: Yeah. I mean, we believe the military action is very crucial to promote the deals. Like, the original deal came about in part due to the military action, and that led to Hamas being willing to reach a deal.
DS: Meaning because the military response to October 7th was so intense, the IDF response was so intense, that it put pressure on Hamas. That incentivized them to like - we need a pause. We need to get something done. Even if it's incremental.
MR: Exactly. So in that sense, we see the military action is very crucial to achieving a deal, but we don't see the military action as leading to actually get the hostages out through some kind of rescue operation.
DS: Like in an Entebbe thing. Or this operation that happened in Rafah with those two guys. MR: Exactly. They got the two guys, but it doesn't seem likely that they're going to get a hundred more that way. So that was our understanding, and that's how we operated. And then really, we got Yarden back. It was amazing.
DS: You were telling me that there was like a few days, where a few were being released each day, and Yarden was not part of day one, day two, day three. And then it was like on the last day?
MR: When the deal happened, every day they would release ten people. And so on the night before, they'd call all the families and tell you if your loved one is or isn't going to be released tomorrow. So every day you had to basically hold your breath until the middle of the night when you get a call and then they tell you, okay, she's not going to be released tomorrow. And we knew that this was going to be the worst week, like out of everything so far. And we kept trying to like, keep our hopes down. Like she's not coming out this round, and it's okay. Like we're going to wait and eventually she's going to come out. And yeah, on day six at 2:30 at night. And again, we kept trying to find ways to keep ourselves busy. So this was really, um, a very unique night where we had this famous Israeli singer come by and sing to all the family members that were engaged in trying to get Yarden back.
DS: So I'm just going to reference that, because I remember at the time, Wendy sent me the video. So this, someone's home -
MR: It was my uncle's home. That's where our roll room was stationed.
DS: Yeah, so you set up like a headquarters for your particular campaign. And there's a lot of work being done, but there's also a lot of downtime there. And it would get pretty dark.
MR: Especially during that week. Because up until that week, we were working non stop day to night. But once the deal started going through, it was like, Okay, now there's nothing we can do except wait and see if she's gonna be in this deal or not.
DS: And then one night, a famous musician shows up at your house. Or shows up at this home, and then he performs, and I saw, I remember Wendy sent me the video, it was very moving. I mean, I, maybe I'll figure out a way to post it. It's just, for a brief moment, the air was let out. Like, the tension.
MR: It's amazing. His name is Tamir Grinberg, and he like, won Israeli X Factor or something like that, and he is one of Yarden's and her brother's favorite singers, and he has a cover of the Gilmore Girls opening song, which Yarden really, really likes. So he came and played that and it was just, yeah, it was amazing. And the fact that that night we got the word that she's coming back tomorrow was just, I get chills just thinking about it. So yeah, at 2:30 AM Yarden's father got the call and wrote to us that it's happening tomorrow. That day was also nerve wracking because you wait all day in front of the TV to see her board the Red Cross trucks. And it happened very late at night. Cause that day - every day, the deal almost blew up. Like every day there were things happening that almost made the deal blew up. But that day was, it ran really long and around, I don't know, midnight. We finally got to see her get on the truck and I remember like, we saw her walking and we just, it was her walk and we just knew that, you know, that it's her. Cause we were so concerned about who we're going to get back. And we got her back and it was amazing. She's such a strong woman. She was amazing.
DS: How old is she?
MR: She's 36.
DS: And since that time, you've had time to be with her and process. Based on what you know from her experience in captivity, what do you think most people who are not following this like you are, don't get about her experience in captivity?
MR: I think people don't understand the, the constant horror and what it does to a person, and like the lack of agency. Because people always want to know if she was, you know, sexually abused, or if she was physically harmed. And thank God she wasn't, though we know that the experience of the hostages are very varied and unfortunately we know that some of them did experience these horrors. But even people like Yarden whose experience was not as horrific, you know, she - for 54 days, she was held in a house guarded by three Hamas guards who watched her 24/7. She had no ability to control anything about her life. She knew that if they wanted to attack her or rape her, there's nothing she can do. She speaks Arabic, so she, a lot of what she tried to do was really to cultivate empathy and actually talk to them, but, she also had to do this. Like she had to constantly be alert, to constantly think about what she says so that they'll think that she's a good person, to not cry ever so that they don't think that she's a lot to handle. Like, all of the time trying to orchestrate this in a way that will protect her the most, you know, she told us that one night, one of the voices that are still hardest for her to hear are the sounds of helicopters, because she would hear our helicopters, the Israeli helicopters. And feel so helpless because they felt so close, but she knew that she had no way of getting to them. And she says that one night, like she ran to the window when one of her guards wasn't looking, and tried to signal out of the window with her hand to kind of use a kind of children's sign language in Israel to signal her name, and she says, you know, now she laughs about it, but she says that, “at night I went to sleep and I was, I couldn't sleep cause I was sure that the army is going to burst through the door any second. And the morning when nothing happened, I thought, well, of course that didn't happen because who's going to see me signaling through a window,” but just, you know, I think it helps you understand a little bit of the amount of helplessness and just terror. You know, she explained to us how so many small things right now, are joyful to her, like things that you appreciate now that you have them back, like going to the bathroom with no one waiting on the other side of the door, or being able to say no, or going to, of course, going to get coffee or sitting in the sun. But it also, she explains, all feels so… strength, like she has to be so careful because it can all be taken away at any moment. So this experience is obviously with her, and it's going to stay with her for so long. And she was only there for 54 days. Carmel, her sister in law, is still there and it's been 182 days.
DS: I want to come back to that. The first deal, it was designed around mothers and children.
MR: Yeah. And then it was supposed to include all the women and children eventually. So initially, they said the deal is going to last for 10 days and it's going to include all the women and children. So Yarden came back on day six, and we figured Carmel is going to come back the next day or two because there's not that many women left. There are 19 women left in total. And so we were all quite sure that Carmel was coming back. Actually, Yarden, even when she was released, was sure that Carmel was going to be released with her. And when she saw that she didn't come, she left a note for her thinking, Carmel's going to be here tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, and she's going to get my note.
DS: Did she at any time see Carmel?
MR: No, no, she was held completely alone. So the only people she saw was on the last day. She saw the people released with her.
DS: Did the Hamas terrorists guarding her give her any information or misinformation during those 54 days to…
MR: She spoke a lot with them and she was also able to hear the radio. So she knew quite a lot about what was going on. You know, one of the things that we tell people back home is that she heard the protests, she knew that there was a hostage square. It gave her a lot of strength to know how the entire country wants to bring her home.
DS: How did she know that?
MR: She listened to the radio, she was able to convince them to let her listen to Israeli radio for some of the time.
DS: It's amazing that they let her do that.
MR: It is amazing.
DS: Because it gave her a connection to -
MR: It did. And it was also like, she describes it as being so. You know, fragile, like she would listen to the radio, but she never knew when they're going to take the radio away. So you have to find the station that has the most information. But also if you change the station, maybe they'll think, okay, she's not really listening to the radio, we'll take it away. And she didn't want them to hear Hebrew because she figured that might antagonize them. So she would listen very, very, very, you know, silently on the lowest volume that she could. And so they let her listen for like five minutes, and then maybe 10 minutes.
DS: But knowing that there's such a cause for the country, the hostage square…
MR: That gave her, that gave her so much. She even heard, I mean, that is how, you know, she heard Carmel's cousin talk on the radio. She also heard her brothers afterwards. And this was the first time she knew that her husband and her daughter were safe, because she had no idea what happened to them. So only three weeks after she was taken, did she hear Gil, her husband's cousin, and he dedicated a song to Alon's mother who was murdered. And he mentioned Yarden and Carmel who were kidnapped. And because he did not mention Alon and Gefen, she realized that they must be okay. And this of course gave her so much strength to move forward. At the same time, when the deal was nearing completion, she also heard some of the more extreme right wing politicians in Israel say, “we shouldn't have this deal. We should, you know, we don't have to bring them all back.” And that was very, very hard for her. She said that when she heard that, it was one of the only times she really cried. And so she describes how the, you know, her guards looked at her and said, “well, why are you crying?” Which is like a ridiculous question to ask a hostage, but because she had kept her composure for so long. And yeah, she had, you know, she describes just unbelievable conversations with these people. So one of her captors had an MA in law, and spoke English and … and still, all three of her guards were committed to the cause of Hamas. You know, she would ask them, she would talk to them and ask them like, “what is your ultimate goal? What do you want? Is it about Israel?” And they very plainly told her, “no, it's about creating a Muslim empire. That's what we want.” They're religious people. This is what they're dedicated to. And this is their ultimate goal. They even told her, you know, “you can live in our Muslim empire as a Jew. It's okay. We just want it to be a Muslim empire. Like, don't worry about it. You're going to go back home. You're just going to live in our empire.” And she would try to, you know, engage with them and say, well, you know, Israel is a liberal country, so I don't know how that's going to work. And they would tell her, “yeah, but women can drive here.” And she said, “yes, well, what about two men who want to live together?” And then they were like, “well, no, that's not, that's not an option.” And what's amazing to me now is that, again, I'm someone who's on the left in Israel and I still am part of the progressive movement, but I feel like we have to be honest and we have to be able to look at all the data and all the things that are happening. This is something that is happening. This is something that Yarden heard firsthand. This is something that Yarden, who is also committed to liberal values and has a lot of empathy for people, but still told us, this is what they wanted. This is what they say. And when I say this in progressive circles, it's as though I have to apologize for it because people, it's hard to hear it. It's hard to face it head on that this is really their cause. This is what some of the people over there want, they're a terrorist organization. They're very religious. They want a Muslim empire and we can't sugarcoat it. And it's very hard to keep that in mind along with, by the way, keeping in mind that some of Yarden's experiences were different. She was held in a house by a family that she says weren't part of Hamas. And were, in a way, victims of Hamas as well, because they weren't given a lot of choice in the matter of whether she's going to be kept there or not. So, you know, both of these things can be true and it's very hard to find audiences that can accept both of them and kind of try and understand what that means.
DS: Was she in a house the whole time?
MR: Yeah.
DS: Was she ever able to sleep? I think about that a lot, like, because to sleep, to truly sleep is to let your guard down.
MR: Actually, she told us that she was able to sleep, and that that was her only escape. So in a way, she really wanted to sleep because whenever she was awake, she had to talk to these guards, and again, like put on this persona and be very alert and part of this team. Hellscape that became her reality. So for her, sleeping was actually a way of not being there and she really tried to postpone the time where she had to get up and, you know, realize that she's still there and it's another day in this reality. But again, I think people deal with it in very very different ways. So this was her experience
DS: And what do you know about Carmel's captivity?
MR: So until the deal, we didn't know anything about Carmel, you know, and that's also part of what was so hard. Our efforts, part of them were in media efforts and public diplomacy efforts. And, you know, in the media, you always have to have a story. So for Yarden, we have this story of this brave mother who saved her child, but for Carmel, we had no idea what happened. So it was very, very hard to talk about her. But during the first deal, two of the teenagers that were released told us that they were actually held with Carmel. So they told us she's alive, which was amazing to hear, but they also told us that they were held in quite harsh conditions. They suffered some physical abuse and they also told us that Carmel was crucial in helping them deal with it, that she made them keep a journal, that she taught them yoga and meditation and really helped them deal with what they were going through. So once they came back and told us this, we have been holding weekly yoga events for Carmel in hostage square in Tel Aviv, but also all around the world now. And the, probably what worries me the most that they told us was really that when they were released, Carmel didn't know that they were being released. They were just taken as though they were going to the bathroom, and she was just left there alone. And we have no idea where she is now or what has happened to her since. But I imagine that was probably one of the hardest things for her is to, after having these teenagers to kind of take care of in a way, and that's the kind of person she is. She's a very, she's a caretaker. To be there alone, I think, is probably very devastating.
DS: So, you have built this campaign, you with other family members and friends. Can you describe what the campaign is? What do you do?
MR: So first off, what we wanted to do was to make sure that the issue of the hostages is front and center. As I said, we focused on Germany and really, Yarden's case became one of the most famous cases in Germany. We did a lot of media interviews. Actually, you know, we brought in a delegation of German reporters to Kibbutz Be’eri about four days, or three days, after the 7th. At this time, the country was in such chaos that no one was able to really deal with this. No government entity or military entity was really taking these journalists and showing them what has happened in the kibbutz. And so, in a way, we kind of became the IDF spokesperson. And we contacted the officers in the field asking them to give us permission to bring in all of these reporters, and Gili went and showed them what had happened there and explained and told the story. We did this with a group of about 30 German reporters, and the following day we did it with a group of like 60 international reporters, AP, New York Times, all of these. Actually for weeks afterward, I would get phone calls from journalists thinking I was the IDF spokesperson, asking me to grant them entrance into Gaza. And about three weeks later, I got a call from a commander of the Gaza brigade telling me, listen, I have some journalists here and they're telling me you okayed them to go into this, whatever military zone. And I was like, well, I can't ‘okay’ anything to anyone. But, so part of what we did was focused on media. We got all the other German families together, when the German foreign minister came to Israel a few days after the 7th. We had a press conference after her visit, again, to make sure that this really, you know, reverberated, uh, in Germany and across the world. We also then, on our delegations to Germany, started talking to politicians and asking them to make sure, you know - in our understanding, in order to reach a humanitarian deal, we had to put pressure on both Israel and Hamas. We figured that the place where we would be most useful is to get this pressure on Hamas, which has to come from international factors. And so we asked Germany, both politicians we talked to, but also financial companies we talked to, and celebrities we talked to, some of these people have connections to Qatar. So to ask Qatar to move in order to pressure Hamas and explain to them that they have to get a deal. Uh, some of these people have connections to Egypt, some of these people have connections, you know, they finance UNRWA, they finance all of these various things that have popped up since. After about a month or so, after Yarden came back, we kind of widened our activity to the U.S. as well. We met here with a lot of people from the State Department, again, to get kind of an understanding of what was happening, what they think we should do. Me and my family members felt we have a unique voice because we're involved in social activism back in Israel, I run this feminist organization. My cousin Gili, who's been with me on a lot of these delegations is a peace educator. And so we met with a lot of progressive voices in the Senate, asking them to, to help change the conversation. Like we understand some of the criticism that's been going on of Israel, but at the same time, we have to have people remember that we have hostages there and understand that the military pressure is also meant to bring the hostages back. So if you call for a ceasefire without including the hostages, you're basically dooming them. And we felt that we had to make this point again and again and again, which is some of what we were doing here in the States. And again, also meeting with people who had connections to Egypt or Qatar, and some who had connections to our own government, asking them to pressure them as well, to make sure that they're really moving forward with the deal. As a family member, this is like a crash course in international diplomacy that you go through. And it requires you to learn very quickly that you have no way of really knowing what's happening. You know, politicians can tell you, “yeah, I say this, you know, I say this aloud, but behind closed doors, I am working to get the hostages back. So this is just a negotiation tactic.” You have no way of knowing because I don't know, maybe they're, they're saying they don't care about the hostages because they don't want to bring the price up.
DS: So Nadav Eyal, who we've had on this podcast, the journalist from, from Yediyoth, has made this point, that you need someone who's conveying that to you said to not increase the cost to Israel that they want to convey, you know, you want to deal?
MR: It's not going to be that easy, right?
DS: It’s like, it's a negotiating tactic to not seem, I got, I want to be very clear: that you need someone in the leadership who doesn't seem desperate for a deal, and that Israel's prepared to do that, which is such a clear contrast with 2011, where Israel was willing to do such a lopsided deal, and they needed to convey to Hamas, “we'll just keep fighting this war.”
MR: Yeah. And I feel like. That just means that, you know, for us, you're always left questioning. DS: And try to understand, what's the real, what's the story behind the story?
MR: Is he doing it just to, or does he really not care? And there's really no way to know for sure.
DS: You're not in anyone's head.
MR: Yeah, exactly.
DS: Okay. I have so much more I want to talk to. I want, just on this campaign. So there's your campaign, your family's campaign. And then there's this monolith, which is the hostage families’ campaign. I think over here, there's a sense that the whole hostage families forum or movement is speaking with one voice. But when you're in Israel, I found when I - they're not all speaking with one voice. And the hostage families are a diverse group, they're a diverse reflection of Israeli society and they have different, many of them have different views about how to go about what they're all trying to achieve, which is getting their loved ones home. So can you describe that diversity?
MR: Yeah, you know, the hostage family forum. It was clear from very early on that they have a quite a terrible mission on their hands, because as you say, the families are not a monolith, and the situation of our loved ones is also not the same. So families of soldiers might think that the best strategy would be to get a deal that would get everyone out, and require as well to release all of our hostages, and think that having incremental deals would be detrimental to that. Whereas, families of the women or other families might think we should go about getting incremental deals. Cause if we only agree to a full out deal, it's never going to happen. And we're going to keep people there for a very long time. For us, it was very clear from very early on that we believed incremental deals was the way to go. And I believe that today, 99 percent of the families do agree that that's the way to go. Even families of the soldiers, that I'm in contact with. But again, strategy wise, a lot of the families differ. Some of the families, you know, think that the strategy should be, put a lot of pressure internationally. Uh, you know, there were the families that tried to protest the aid trucks going into Gaza. And so, even though it sounds terrible, you know, helping the humanitarian situation in Gaza means that a deal will be further away and people kind of need to remember that. So, some of the families said, we should focus on that. Another group of families is saying - we don't know if Netanyahu is really committed to creating a deal. And we should focus on making sure that he remembers that this is the most important thing and that Israeli society understands that if we don't get these people back, it's going to change our society fundamentally, and we should not allow that. So. Yeah, the different families have different aims, and the hostage family forums really tried… And I think they really did help us do what we thought was right. So as a forum, as an organization, at least initially, they tried very much not to have any concrete kind of statement. They mostly tried to help the families do what they wanted. If you wanted to go, uh, abroad, they would help you organize the mission. If you wanted to talk to Knesset members, they would help you meet with them. And in that sense, it was, it is, a very, very crucial kind of organization to just help the families achieve their different ends. But its downfall is in this inability to create one strategy for all the families, because we don't necessarily agree. And I think that's kind of what we're seeing right now, is that some of the families feel like, “It's been six months. We can't wait any longer. We have to ramp things up and we have to ramp up the demonstrations. We're not sure that the government cares as much as it should about what's happening, because the fact of the matter is that it's been six months and these people are still not home.” Other families feel like, “this is not the right time. We know that this might make Hamas quite happy if they see this happening.” So, and I'm not sure who's right. In my opinion, it can work together. Like the pressure that some families are creating within Israel works well with the pressure that some families are creating on Hamas. And I think it's good that there are different families placed in different places doing different things. I don't feel like the families disagree… but it is very hard to keep it together. People are obviously, ‘emotional’ is not the right word, but people are at their wits end. It's been six months. You know, for us, I'm a bit more calm because my cousin is here. Carmel is still not here, but getting Yarden back -
DS: Was incremental success.
MR: Was incremental success. And it brought us some breathing room, like we can breathe again. I just watched some video of me and my cousins from before Yarden came back. And I looked like I'm not here. So I cannot imagine what goes through the mind of a mother whose daughter is over there for six months, and we know what they're going through. And… yeah, and I don't know what the right tactic is. And I think no one knows what the right tactic is. As we said, like you get all these conflicting accounts and information. Is, is Hamas not willing to get a deal? Is it Israel that's not willing to compromise enough? Should we focus on Qatar? Or is Qatar really crucial to get the deal going? Like how, what is the best strategy? And yeah, I don't think there's like one answer to it.
DS: But in the last couple of weeks, there's been this migration, at least with some members of the hostage families movement, there's been a migration from them to the political protests that were happening in another part of Tel Aviv, weekly, protesting the government, calling for new elections, bring the government down - that doesn't represent the entire hostage movement.
MR: It does not. And some of the families have spoken out about this.
DS: Spoken out -
MR: That they are not part of this, that they don't want to necessarily connect to the demonstrations against the government. You know, even within the same families, you can have different perspectives. Within our family, we have some family members that feel like this is the way to go. And some family members that feel like we should wait a little bit longer. And again, I don't know what the right tactic is. I know that… again, the hostages are not here. In that sense, I agree, the government is failing because they're still not here. And a lot of them have died. So some people feel like, we've run the course of trying to let this government work on this issue. I can understand that. I can also understand why they want the support of the demonstrations going on, because, truthfully, a lot of those people who went to those demonstrations against this government also supported the hostage families. And that's not trivial. Like, you know, getting people - as someone who's involved in, like, activism, getting people to get out of their house and come out and demonstrate week after week after week for six months is really, really hard. And you take who you can get. These are the people that came to support us. On the other hand, a lot of other families are very, very worried, rightfully so, that this might take the consensus that exists in Israel still, around the need to bring the hostages back and make it into a left wing issue or something that has to do with against this current government, which I think many of us don't want to happen because we feel like it's an issue that a lot of people can agree is important, even if they're on the right, like, it doesn't necessarily matter.
DS: I've heard some say that they're worried that Hamas, Sinwar will see, in the increasing political pressure on the government, “well, there's no rush to do a deal because there's pressure on the leadership. And why do we want to take the pressure off of Israel's political, off its government? So let's let that play out.”
MR: It's also true. I feel like there's like two sides to it again, because, you know, when I'm here, one of the things I talked to with people on the progressive side here, from a very pragmatic point of view. I feel like the criticism of Israel right now here in the States does not make Hamas want to reach a deal. Because as you say, they're seeing that Israel is suffering so terribly right now. Why would they want to have a deal? Like, Hamas don't care about its citizens. They don't care that Palestinians are dying. It only cares about the Palestinian cause. So in that sense, it helps the cause if Israel is becoming this pariah. And so, why should they let us kind of, get out of that hole, by agreeing to a ceasefire deal, if they see that the entire world currently is turning against us? And I've been trying to make this point.
DS: And that the world could force a ceasefire on Israel…
MR: Without getting the hostages back.
DS: Without getting the hostages back.
MR: Which to the families is obviously the worst conceivable thing because if there's a ceasefire without the hostages, we may not get them back for years. Just like Gilad Shalit.
DS: And that was what was so jarring to me about that UN Security Council resolution that passed, because it was the first time we saw the delinking of the release of the hostages, that a ceasefire has to be conditioned on release of the hostages. That’s the first time we saw that delinked. Now the administration says, “look that's not our policy.” Okay, but I don't know how Hamas sees it. They see for the first time, every, all these resolutions are getting vetoed, vetoed, vetoed, that did not have linkage. And here's one that did not have linkage. And then it passes. So do they think, directionally, things are moving their direction? Why should they negotiate? Because -
MR: I completely agree. I feel like we have to have more pressure on Hamas. And we're, you know, Hamas is not a nation state. So we've had all these meetings in the UN, currently. And I understand that Hamas is not a nation state. So obviously, the pressure on Israel is, is larger because we are a member of the UN, so we are susceptible to this pressure. But at the same time, even though… you know, I've had this conversation with, um, one of the senators we met with, who was very committed to the issue of the hostages, and I believe truthfully committed, and told me, you know, whenever I talk about a ceasefire, I always mention the hostages and vice versa, but when I say, “let's reach a ceasefire deal and release the hostages,” the media only focuses on the ceasefire deal. Because everyone says, “yeah, release the hostages, of course, but the ceasefire deal, what exactly does it mean?” Like there's a lot more conversation around it. And then the issue of the hostages gets moved aside. And I feel like that's, again, part of what we're trying to change, and we don't really know how, is to center or at least help kind of create a more equal situation between this issue of the hostages and the issue of the ceasefire because, because everyone supposedly agrees that we have to get the hostages back, they kind of move to the back burner of things. And as we said, if we don't, you know, if we are forced into a ceasefire without the hostages for us, for the families, that's the worst conceivable situation. And I do feel like it's a humanitarian situation that's just, you know, I told you before we started, I was at Columbia today. We've been speaking at some college campuses and I saw this very pro Palestine group and I tried speaking to them, cause I believe you can speak to everyone, and I wanted to talk to them, like really, without screaming, just very kind of calmly talk and I told them, “Can you tell me what your position is regarding the hostages? Like, let's not get into like, Palestine.” Okay, but can you -
DS: And you told them you were a family member.
MR: I told them I'm a family member. I told them like, “straight up, listen, I'm a family member of the hostages, but I'm not here to yell at you. Um, I'm connected to organizations on the left in Israel. I just want to understand, like really understand your position.” And one of them, you know, this 20 year old told me, “Yeah, you know, I feel for you and your family, but I feel like, you know, you're in a terrible situation, but, it's not part of the conversation. It moves the conversation to places that, you know, don't allow us to focus on Palestine.” And that, to me, is just terrible. It's inhumane. And again, I personally am someone who's on the left. I am for a Palestinian state. I think it's important. I still, even now, after October 7th, think it's important. But the fact that people can't hold this complexity of, yeah, we should talk about a Palestinian state, but you can't neglect people taken hostage from their families, innocent people just taken from their homes, women, who are experiencing sexual assault. And, you know, when I see progressives and feminists start to deny sexual assaults, start to require proofs upon proofs. And these are women that, I believed, we had the same values. I have dedicated the past decade of my life to fight for women's rights and to fight for believing all women. And now I see people say, “Well, we need more proof.” You know, Amit Soussana, who was interviewed in the New York Times, she was interviewed for eight hours. She had to show them her communications with her doctors the day after she came back from captivity.
DS: Just for context, Amit Sousanna is a hostage who was released in the first round.
MR: And she recently -
DS: - went public. She did an interview with the New York Times, and she had been sexually assaulted while she was in captivity.
MR: Yeah.
DS: And, and you're saying that the, almost like the interrogation she went through, like people didn't like, at hello, say “we believe you.”
MR: Yeah, to me as a feminist, you know, the values that we were fighting for and Me Too and whatever, were understanding that it's very hard for women to come forward with stories of sexual assault and understanding that we need to believe women when they come forward with these stories, because otherwise we're not going to get the full story, especially with sexual assault related to wartime. We know that these stories cannot come out, sometimes decades afterwards. Uh, Pramila Patten, the UN representatives that came to Israel told us, “I've heard stories in Africa, a woman came up to me and told me, you know, of a rape that happened 30 years earlier. And I asked her, ‘why are you telling me this now?’ And she said, ‘well, my husband recently passed away. So only now did I feel that I can expose what has happened to me.’” We know that we're not going to know the full scope of what happened on October 7th and what happened to the hostages for a very, very long time. But the fact that now, kind of this fighting that's happening around this issue of sexual assault is going to take the feminist movement decades back. And I feel like the fact that people here committed to this movement aren't protecting these, these values that we fought for, all of a sudden you're okay with the fact that a woman that went through this has to go through eight hours of interrogation, has to bring all of these, you know, supposed receipts for what has happened to her? Most women can't do that. And then we're never going to know what happened to them. How are we okay with this? You know, the bar is going to be raised for believing women. And I would imagine that people committed to liberal and progressive values would be against that. But I'm seeing all of these crazy, you know, people starting to rationalize, “well, maybe the victims we saw on October 7th, who we saw their genitals mutilated, they were injured from, whatever, from bullets.” It's gone awry, all sorts of insane explanations that sound like, you know, JFK conspiracy theories. And I just, I'm disgusted and I feel very much betrayed and I feel like it's gonna bite us women in the ass. Like this is just as an aside, you know, of myself as a woman now, just not believing how easily people have abandoned these principles.
DS: We've referenced a couple times in this conversation Gilad Shalit. So for our listeners, I just want to explain why this is important. Gilad Shalit was an Israeli soldier who was taken hostage by Hamas, and he was released after five years of captivity in 2011 in an exchange, that for one live, Gilad Shalit, the Israeli government, released from Israeli prisons 1,027 Palestinian prisoners, some of whom were extremely dangerous and had committed horrendous terrorist acts. I, uh, have friends, Israeli friends, who have had loved ones who were murdered by terrorists who were released in the Gilad Shalit deal. At the time of the deal, which was extremely lopsided, there was, from now what we understand, a number of considerations as to why the government was willing to agree to such a lopsided deal. Interestingly, Ehud Olmert, who had been Prime Minister before Netanyahu, had considered a similar deal, maybe not. But you know, the details are murky, but that he turned it down and then Netanyahu did do the deal. And now there's, from the, some around Netanyahu, there's this perspective that the reason he agreed to that deal was because there was a world in which at the time Israel could be at war with Iran, following 2011. And if any Prime Minister is going to send Israeli military personnel into battle in Iran, and some of them may not come back, or some of them may be captured, it was important to demonstrate to the Israeli public: “we will go to the ends of the earth to get our people back, even if it means an incredibly lopsided deal.” In that deal, one of the prisoners that was released was Yahya Sinwar. Which you know, who was the architect of October 7th. And this is, in a sense, an unfair question to ask, but I've thought about it a lot and you're being very open so I'm just going to ask it. Do people question the Gilad Shalit deal and say, “well, wait a minute, what would have happened had we not done the Gilad Shalit deal? Would Yahya Sinwar still be in prison? Would the lesson that Hamas had taken from that deal, or from the absence of that deal, was, ‘taking hostages doesn't necessarily pay.’” In fact, it was clear they thought on October 7th, ‘get as many hostages as possible. That's our currency.’ That's what makes Israel crack. That's our protection. Did Hamas decide to go for as many hostages as possible as a strategy because of their lesson learned from the Gilad Shalit deal? I know you don't know the answer to this question, obviously, but I hear Israelis making this point, by the way, what I'm saying is reflective of what I've heard from many Israelis, including, by the way, family members of Israelis fighting in Gaza right now. And they're worried that their sons are going to get taken hostage in Gaza, just like Israeli soldiers and others got taken hostage on October 7th, because Hamas believes this works.
MR: I think, you know, it's a fair question. It's a thought that exists in the minds of many people in Israel and rightfully so. You know, I, I just finished my PhD in philosophy. And one of the things we learn is not to dwell on what we call counterfactuals. So I have no way of knowing what would have happened if, what would have happened if there wasn't a Gilad Shalit deal, would there have been a different kind of Yahya Sinwar? Like, we don't know, we're never going to know. Uh, so those kinds of thoughts to me are less… fruitful. What we need to ask ourselves is, is it worth it? Is the price worth it? And to me, the answer has to be yes, because as you said, what differentiates my country from Hamas, among other things, is our commitment to human life, and what makes people willing to go to the army and risk their lives… My friends were doing military reserves, you know, people in their thirties, not only young 18 year olds, is the fact that we're fighting for our values. We're fighting for what Israel means. These are Jewish values. These are Israeli values. And it means that, you know, every life is its own world, right? I think that's true. And I'm proud that my government did this lopsided deal, because it proved to the world, “yeah, we care so much about one soldier that we are willing to free thousands of people.” And to me, that shows who we are. And that makes me still proud to be an Israeli, even in times where I disagree with my government vehemently. And I think that we have to safeguard that. If Hamas takes that away from us, then, to me, they've won, much more so than if they keep on attacking us in the future. This is the one thing that I feel is in the core of who we are as Israelis. And yeah, it's a problem. It's very likely that they're going to keep on trying to get prisoners, because they know it works, to get hostages, of course, uh, because they know it works. But does that mean that we should give up on the things that are most important to us? I don't think that that can be a good solution to that.
DS: Two final questions. I've spoken to many kibbutz from the south. And what I hear is, shock, continued shock, misery. I mean, it's not just what happened on October 7th, it's their lives since October 7th. It's having to be relocated, having to be refugees in their own country. I mean, when you just, sometimes I stop and think, and I think about the history of Israel, which is, in part, a history of a country built by refugees. And now they're refugees in their own country. They're internally displaced, at least, refugees, but they're with no end in sight. So I hear misery, I hear grief, I hear frustration. I don't hear anger from them. They don't seem angry about, at their government, about, I don't know, they seem shattered. A friend of mine wrote this piece that I'll post in the show notes, this essay, and she chose that word carefully, shattered, that these are people whose lives are shattered, which is different than angry.
MR: I think shattered is the perfect word to describe what I've seen. You know, I, I'm not from a kibbutz, I'm from near Tel Aviv, but since October 7th, we've been working closely with Alon's family, Yarden's husband, who is from Kibbutz Be’eri. And yeah, that family is just, you know, his mother was murdered. His sister is still held hostage. His wife was held hostage. And in addition to all of this, his community has been shattered and these are people who, you know, the kibbutzim are, are socialist communities. One of their greatest strengths is the community being together and coming together. That's part of their currency. And the fact that now that doesn't exist anymore is, I think, yeah, shattered a lot of what these people believed in, what kept them going. They don't have, like, the social structures that they, where their strength was. And, you know, we really saw this after October 7th, when our families started trying to advocate. And you could see that my family, luckily, was not harmed. We're from the center of Israel. A lot of us are also, you know, in journalism or advocacy or all of these sort of things. So we could come together very quickly and work together. But a lot of the families from the Kibbutzim, their entire lives have been destroyed. Their homes have been destroyed. Their communities are scattered. Where are they going to get the friends that are going to come and help them? Their friends are now dealing with their own loss, their own financial inability to survive, all of these things. I think. You know, those families haven't even had time to grieve. We've been, on this delegation, me and my cousins have been thinking a lot about Kinneret, who I didn't know, who was Alon's mother, who was murdered. And, you know, it's been six months, and I've been talking so much.
DS: How old was she?
MR: She was in her 60s, I believe. And, um, All of a sudden we have some time to think about Kinneret and I heard, you know, her children's stories of her and I met some friends of her and you just realized that there's this huge loss that no one has even had time to deal with. No one has had time to grieve properly because there's still so much going on. Like Carmel is still not here. It's similar to how Yarden keeps telling us that part of her healing process is, is ongoing, because the situation is ongoing because we can't go back to normal as long as there's, as there are people over there, we can't just start to rebuild as long as Carmel is over there. So, I think people can't even start to understand all that they're lost, which is maybe why they're not angry yet, because I don't think they've really understood what has happened yet. We're still so focused on the hostages and getting them back, you know, that we're still in the crisis.
DS: Two final questions. I said two before, but they keep, this is a Jewish conversation. So if I keep saying it's going to end, then I keep, it never ends. One is what has changed about you over these six months? And if the answer is no, to my next question, we'll just leave it at no.
MR: Sure.
DS: Do you find any kernels of hope? Can you see any threads of optimism amid the shattering?
MR: Yeah. So I've changed in several ways. You know, because I'm someone who works a lot in feminism, before the 7th, I was, a lot of my work focused on different perspectives to things and thinking about different communities and women of color and different women. And everything is always very complex when you're committed to these ideals, right? There's always like a thousand ways of viewing every single situation. But when something like this happens, the world becomes extremely simple all of a sudden. It's who is going to help me get my cousin back. And who is not going to help me get my cousin back. And that's it. I don't care about anything else.
DS: It's clarifying.
MR: It's clarifying. And that stayed with me. You know, the experience of the pragmatism that comes with it. I can speak to people on the far right that I would have never thought of cooperating with, but they're helping me get my cousin back. So yeah, I'm going to talk to them. And it made everything much more down to earth. And I think to me, going forward, politically, it's staying with me. I'm still committed to the ideals I was committed to before October 7th, but in thinking about how we can move these things forward, I'm much more down to earth and pragmatic and understanding of, it boils down to who is going to help you move things along. And in that sense as well, my experience here in the U.S., of the support that we've been getting from the Jewish community, has also shifted my view. I think I, you know, didn't experience an existential threat to my life until October 7th. I had the privilege of thinking, yeah, Israel is the stronger country. Hamas is very dangerous, but our army is much better. We're always going to be safe. And then all of a sudden, no, actually we're not always going to be safe. And when we're in trouble, the people that are going to help us, aside from the people, our loved ones and people around us, are the Jewish communities around the world.
DS: I think that is a piercing insight, and I've never said this before on this podcast. I think, and I see this with my own children who are in Jewish day school and were involved with Jewish communal life here, and I have been my whole life, my family and my parents. The diaspora puts extraordinary emphasis on the idea of Jewish peoplehood. Israel doesn't.
MR: Exactly.
DS: And I don't blame Israel for not, but they focus on raising their children, Israelis, with a great sense of Jewish statehood, of Jewish nationhood, of Jewish nationalism, because they're state building. That's a big project. It's a hard project, as we're living through right now. But for the diaspora that has no state, peoplehood is all we got. And I have been struck since October 7th, the number of Israelis… who are much more tuned in to the idea of peoplehood, and, not only are they dealing with their own shattering, but many of them are very worried about us over here because as you said with your experience at Columbia today, they're watching this craziness over here, and the pogroms, and the wave of anti semitism… and they're, for the first time, very tuned in to what's happening to their fellow Jews over here.
MR: Definitely. When we first started coming here, we said, “well, we, we don't need to speak to the Jewish community because they're, they're supporting us. We should speak to like the larger community.” But when we started having these events, in like, Hillels, at Harvard, at Tufts, after I would speak, people would come up to me so moved and thank me so much and explain how alone they've been feeling. You know, again, like even feminists who are now being ostracized by their feminist groups on campus, because they're Jewish, or because they're Israeli, and LGBTQ members who are now being ostracized, but those communities… and just students who are committed to values of, I don't know, liberal values. And suddenly people are telling them, well, you can't be committed to these values and support Israel. So all of a sudden I felt how important it also was for people here. And I had no idea. And really - yeah, that's a very deep change for me that is staying with me. And yeah, it's going to change how I, how I view Israel and all of this going forward and is by the way, one of my sources of hope, because it's strengthening to see new allies, like allies that are not really new, but I have a new connection to that I never knew of before. And I think, you know, my family, since the very first day, we said, we're going to be optimistic, not because we're naive, but just because that's our working statement. Like that's the only way to work. If we feel everything is doomed, then everything's going to be doomed. So if we're optimistic, we might be wrong, but at least we're going to be doing something. And I feel like that's the only way to live your life. The things that helped me keep this optimism, first and foremost, I think it's Yarden. Yarden came back. She's been through hell. She didn't lose her humanity, her commitment to empathy to other people. And one of the first things she told us was also, “we have to get Carmel back.” And she's been so committed to that. She's been interviewed by 60 Minutes. She's been interviewed in Israel. To her, that's torture. She's such a private person. The fact that people recognize her on the street is terrible to her, but she's willing to do all of this because she understands what's going on over there, and she wants to get them all back. And when you see her, and when you see women like Amit, who was willing to share the most terrible private thing that has ever happened to her, just so that the world understands that this is happening and stops questioning it, that gives me optimism because it shows me how much strength we have. And it makes me want to, you know, be equal to that strength, not disappoint these women that have been through so much. If they're still able to do all of this, then who am I to, to give up?
DS: Maya, thank you.
MR: Thank you so much.
DS: I hope we're not meeting again in six months from now, or maybe we are, but in a different context. And, um, I know it sounds weird to say Shabbat Shalom, but Shabbat Shalom, and, um, I will look forward to seeing you soon.
MR: Thank you so much.
DS: That's our show for today. To keep up with Maya, and also the movement to bring Carmel back, you can follow what they are up to on Instagram at BringCarmelBack. And we'll post that link in the show notes as well. Call Me Back is produced and edited by Ilan Benatar. Our media manager is Rebecca Strom. Additional editing by Martin Huergo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.